Christmas Traditions: How the culture of Christmas started!
Gingerbread House
While gingerbread had been around since ancient Greece, Queen Elizabeth I was the first to decorate ginger cookies, having them sometimes turned into caricatures of people visiting the royal court in the 16th century. Over the years, decorating gingerbread cookies became more and more elaborate until Germans began using the cookies to build walled houses — especially during the Christmas season. This became even more popular after the Brothers Grimm published the story of “Hansel and Gretel” in their “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” in 1812.
Poinsettias
Native to the Pacific coast of Central America, these plants were brought to the United States by the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, botanist Joel Roberts Poinsett, in the 1920s. A hundred or so years later, California horticulturist Paul Ecke donated poinsettia plants to TV shows, increasing their popularity. Poinsettias became the nation’s best-selling potted plant in 1986. These plants are often considered to be highly toxic, but that’s not the case — that came from an urban legend that spread in 1919 about a child dying after eating a poinsettia leaf.
U.S. Botanic Garden
'The 12 Days of Christmas'
What we think of now as a Christmas song was originally an old poem recited by French children in the 1700s. In 1780, an English version was published in a children’s book. English composer Frederic Austin then set the poem to music in 1909, creating the version we’re most familiar with today. The Christian “12 Days of Christmas” — o cially known as the Twelvetide — refers to the time between the birth of Jesus and the visit by the Magi — so really, this would be Dec. 25 to Jan. 5.
WikiMedia Commons
Christmas Cards
Christmas cards originated in England in 1843 but didn’t really catch on until the three Hall Brothers — postcard makers in Norfolk, Nebraska — moved to Kansas City in 1910 and began selling printed, folded cards with a matching envelope. The Hall Brothers went on to popularize specially designed gift-wrapping paper in 1917. The company they founded began selling Christmas ornaments in 1973. Hallmark sold $4.5 billion in greeting cards in 2019. There are about 2,000 Hallmark retail stores across the U.S.
