Poinsettias are a flowering plant indigenous to southern Mexico and Central America, but they’ve become a common symbol of Christmas in America and around the world. How did this bright red plant become associated with the holidays?

According to Wikipedia, the plant’s association with Christmas began in Mexico in the 16th century, where legend tells of a young girl who was too poor to provide a gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. The tale goes that the child was inspired by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside and place them in front of the church altar. Crimson “blossoms” sprouted from the weeds and became beautiful poinsettias.

Poinsettias, known as the Christmas Eve Flower (Flor de Buena Noche) in Mexico, slowly became associated with the celebration of Christ’s birth. The plant’s star-shaped leaf pattern is said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color represents the blood sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus. Franciscan friars in Mexico started including the plants in their Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, and the plants came to the United States in 1825.

They were introduced here by Joel Roberts Poinsett, an amateur botanist and the first United States Minister to Mexico, and that’s how the plants, whose scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima, came to be known as poinsettias.

Their rise in popularity in the United States and around the world was promoted by the Ecke family of California, which started selling the plants in the early 1900s and developed a way of grafting poinsettias to make a fuller, more compact plant. This secret allowed them to have a virtual monopoly on the poinsettia market until the 1990s. They also promoted the plants by sending free poinsettias to TV stations to display on air and by appearing on programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials.

Today the association between poinsettias and Christmas is well established and will undoubtedly be with us for a long time to come.

It’s been a holiday tradition to burn a Yule log even before there was a Christmas. It signifies that it is time for friends and family to gather near for songs, stories and fun, and until the Yule log burns out, there’s no more working.

In its beginnings, the Yule log was burned as a celebration of the winter solstice. Yule ran from several weeks before the winter solstice to a couple weeks after in Scandinavia, as this was the coldest and darkest time of the year. And though the Yule log is named from this Scandinavian tradition, the practice of burning a special log during the winter months was a tradition in many countries across the world.

When Pope Julius I decided to celebrate Christmas around the time of the Winter Solstice during the fourth century, the Yule log tradition continued, but the light from the burning log represented the light of the Savior instead of the light of the sun.

Traditionally on or about Christmas Eve, a big log was brought into the home or a larger gathering place. People would sing and tell stories while children danced and played. The log was even decorated, and food and wine were placed upon it as offerings. It was also a way of starting the New Year with a fresh start as a person’s mistakes and shortcomings were burned in the flame of the log. Songs were sung and stories told. Children danced. Offerings of food and wine and decorations were placed upon it. The log was never allowed to burn completely; leftover pieces of it were kept in the house to start next years log and also to bring good luck to the home. It was believed those pieces would protect the home from fire, lightning or other acts of nature. Ashes of the log would be placed in wells to keep the water good and spread at the roots of trees, vines and sprinkled upon gardens and crops to ensure a good harvest.

Decorating trees during what has become known as the Christmas season began in Germany during the early 1800‘s. Nuts coated with sugar, apples and other pieces of candied fruit hung among the evergreen branches were the first German Christmas ornaments. Ornaments cut from gingerbread dough and marzipan also became popular. Later eaten by the children, these expensive treats were out of reach for all but the wealthy.

By the mid 1800‘s the glass-blowers of Lauscha began to produce hand-blown glass ornaments to mimic the fruits and nuts the wealthy were hanging on their trees. Long known for the quality of their glassware (medicine bottles, barometers, marbles and eye glasses) the glass-blowers expanded the ornament business into a cottage industry with the men doing the actual blowing of the ornaments, the women doing the silvering of the insides (early in the industry with either lead or mercury, then later on with a mixture of sugar-water and silver nitrate) and the children painting the outside. Thus began the tradition of the beautiful glass ornaments that Germany became famous for.

Lovely glass spheres aren’t the only German Christmas ornaments that valued by collectors. Dresden began producing gaily painted, embossed paper ornaments. Decorations of pressed tin with brightly lithographed pictures were being produced in other parts of Germany and thin strips of metal called “angel hair” began to show up on trees around the country. This “angel hair” is what we now lovingly call “icicles”. Ornaments were also made out of wood, walnut shells, pewter and wax.

Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert (a native of Germany) introduced the glass ornaments to England and by the 1870‘s German Christmas ornaments were being exported to Great Britain. Ten years later, F.W. Woolworth (the American Five & Dime giant) discovered the lovely glass ornaments during a trip to Europe and began importing them to the United States.

Though the popularity of the ornaments declined during both WWI and WWII, Germany still imports some ornaments to the United States every year. German Christmas ornaments, especially the older ones are still valued by collectors. The most popular German Christmas ornament shapes are Santa and Mrs. Claus (or St. Nick), Mary and Joseph, rocking horses, soldiers, pinecones and, of course, the German Christmas Pickle.

Of the many contributions that the German culture has made to modern society, perhaps one of the most beautiful and enduring is that of the Christmas tree and decorations.

- Sherry Law

Long before the birth of Jesus Christ, wreaths were commonly used as a symbol of celebration and achievement. Laurel wreaths were used to crown the winners in the early Olympic games, and the tradition of bestowing wreaths upon the winners of sporting events is still followed today in some events, such as horse racing and car racing. But now wreaths are most often used for another celebration – Christmas.

The first Christmas Advent wreath was invented in the 1830s by Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Protestant parson who ran an orphanage in in Hamburg, Germany. Wichern made a wooden ring and affixed red and white candles on one side of it to help the children count the days until Christmas. During each service of daily prayer, a child would light one candle, until on Christmas Eve all of them would be illuminated. It is thought that children liked this ring so much that they decorated it with evergreen twigs. Later the number of candles was reduced to four and evergreen boughs became an important component of the rings.

The evergreen branches represent everlasting life brought through Jesus Christ, and the circular shape of the wreath represents God himself, with no beginning and no end.

Typically, three of the candles in an advent wreath are violet-colored, and one is rose-colored, but some choose to use all purple or all blue candles. When used in household devotion, one candle is lit on the first evening of Advent, which falls on a Saturday. Each Saturday thereafter during Advent another candle is lit. Some wreaths have a large white candle in the center which is lit on Christmas Day to signify Christ’s birth.

The tradition of Advents wreaths took a while to catch on in Germany and spread throughout Europe, but by the time German immigrants came to America, they brought this tradition with them. Evergreen wreaths without candles also became a popular symbol of the holidays. Now it’s a household tradition for many families around the world to have a wreath made from evergreen hanging upon the front door of their home during the holidays.

by Sherry Law
Though many people may disagree, it appears that the legend of the German Christmas Pickle is another example of what has come to be known as an “urban legend.”

According to several sites spread across the Internet, the German Christmas Pickle is a “very ancient Christmas eve tradition in Germany.” Supposedly generations of German parents would hide an ornament shaped like a pickle somewhere deep within the branches of their Christmas tree after all of the other ornaments had been hung. The first child to find the ornament the next morning got an extra present from St. Nick. If the first person to find the pickle was an adult, they were supposed to have good luck during the course of the next year.

When you look closely at the legend, however, it appears to fall apart. First, children in Germany traditionally open their gifts on Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning and St Nick generally visits on either the 5th or 6th of December. Both of these facts would make it impossible for the first child to see the pickle on Christmas morning to get an extra present from St Nick. But even more importantly is the fact that few, if any, native Germans have ever even heard of the tradition. Those that have apparently learned about it from either Americans or German friends who learned of it while visiting America.

So where did the legend of the German Christmas Pickle come from? One popular story being related across the Internet deals with a Bavarian-born Civil War soldier being captured and sent to prison in Andersonville, Georgia. In poor health, starving and fearing death, he is said to have begged one of the guards for a pickle. The guard found the poor man a pickle, which miraculously revived him and allowed him to live long enough to return to his family. Once there, he is said to have started the tradition of hiding the pickle among the boughs of the Christmas tree each year.

Regardless of whether this is the origin of the German Christmas Pickle or not, the fact remains that Germans do not claim the tradition, and though it is a cute and unusual legend, the German Christmas Pickle tradition appears to be a total fabrication.

About.com says “Urban legends are popular stories alleged to be true which spread from person to person via oral or written communication, “ and that they “tend to arise spontaneously and are rarely traceable to a single point of origin.” The legend of the German Christmas Pickle definitely seems to fall into the category of an urban legend. And like other urban legends, the who and why is probably destined to remain a mystery.