Hoping Santa is good to all of you. All the best of the season!

At our Christmas/end of season dinner at Bog Stop last week, once again someone asked WHY do we put a tree in the house for Christmas.
So again, I rise to the occasion with my explanation...

The first decorated tree was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas Tree with candles, to show his children how the stars twinkled through the dark night.

This quote from another site on the history of the Christmas seems to make light of the effort and time that went into the advent of the decorated tree. To expand, Riga, in 1510, was a thriving village consisting of 2 castles, a NEEDS store, a gas station and a bar.

In castle #1 lived the Count Schnappit Hindendork and his fair wife Grunhilda Hindendork. Hindendork came from a long line his grandmother once heard at a Solstice Ball held in Bremen. On the other side of town was the castle of the Baron Heinrich Splatzenberg of Splotz, a small dot on the map of the area to become known as Austria-Hungry of WWI starting fame. The good Baron shared his castle with the Baroness Finckles Splatzenberg, 13 horses, 7 sheep ( another story for another time), 6 Leaping Lords and a partridge.

Now because this area of Riga was a stronghold of the native pagans (of frolicking naked through the woods under a full moon fame (is there any other way to frolic??), also know as the eaters of small children and practisers of witchcraft and druidism), both the Count and the Baron felt it prudent to maintain certain traditions of said pagans. The least harmful of these traditions, in the eyes of the good castle owners, was that of taking some greenery into ones home/hut/abode/shed. (One man's hut is another man's castle) during the Solstice.

The good lady Finckles Splatzenbrg had long thought that her neighbour Grunhilda went a little too far to satisfy the pagans, but was always a little jealous that Grunhilda's  great room always looked just a bit better than that of the Splatzenbergs. As the 1510 Solstice approached she ordered her Manservant (!) To bring in more greenery than the usual bough. Having no idea what the good lady desired, Fritz (the Manservant) had an entire tree brought into the Great Room under the logical belief it would be easier to remove what was left after the decorating than to continue making trips to the woods for more boughs.

Now it came to pass that Schnappit came to visit his friend Heinrich and noticed the tree standing in the corner of the Great Room. Unaware that the tree was an expedient and not an ornament, he mentioned this escalation in the bough wars to his wife, who ordered HER Manservant to bring in a larger tree ( size does matter). The very next day, Heinrich went to visit Schnappit, and noticed HIS tree in HIS Great Room - to add insult to injury, from where he was sitting, Heinrich saw, through the boughs of the bigger tree, the flickering lights of the candles on the mantle. Unaware of what exactly he saw, Heinrich hurried back to his castle and ordered HIS (Finckle's) manservant to put some candles ON the tree standing in the corner of his Great Room...


After the fire department left, Heinrich consulted with his armourer, who came up with a plan to pound some left over armour into thin clips that would hold the candles in a somewhat safer manner. Well it went down hill from there....Grunhilda wanted candles, and remembering how her jewellery glowed in the candle light when she wore it, hung a pair of ear rings (cheap ones, not the good stuff) on the tree to catch the glow. Finckles hung a string of pearls, Grunhilda hung a tin star HER armourer made for her. The partridge got into Finckle's tree ( not at all anticipating another legend about a pear tree  to come in later years).  Foretelling electric train sets of 400 years later, Schnappit put a toy dog cart under his tree........

quoted from Christmas and other Lies
                     Wikipedia
                     2004