Christmas Trees
Christmas trees are perhaps the most quintessential Christmas tradition. From Charlie Brown’s tiny tree to its behemoth relative in Rockefeller Center, Christmas trees are almost ubiquitous come the holidays. This tradition, however, has only been around for a few centuries. It got its start in 16th-century Europe, where Protestant Germans (supposedly led by Martin Luther) first began to light candles on evergreen trees. The tradition spread among the nobility of Europe during the early 1800s, reaching Vienna, France, and Russia. Queen Charlotte of England, who was born in Germany, introduced Christmas trees to the British royal family in 1800, but the tradition spread little until Prince Albert’s marriage to Queen Victoria. By 1856, the tradition had become widespread across the British Isles, and new traditions like electrical lighting emerged in the 1900s. By the time the Rockefeller Christmas tree was introduced in 1931 and a Charlie Brown Christmas aired in 1965, Christmas trees had become an integral part of the holidays.
Advent Calendars
Advent calendars trace their origins back to 19th-century Germany, where the tradition of counting down the days to Christmas began as a way to mark the buildup to the holidays. The first advent calendars were simple hand-made creations; people would tick chalk marks off on walls or place straws in a Nativity crib to mark the days until the 25th. The German printer Gerhard Lang produced the first printed advent calendars in the early 1900s in partnership with illustrator Ernst Kleper.
The calendars were wildly successful, and by the 1930s they were in high demand in Germany. After World War II, returning soldiers brought them back to their countries in Europe and America, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was photographed opening one with his grandchildren in 1953. By 1971, Cadbury had begun producing chocolate-filled advent calendars, and the tradition hasn’t faded in popularity since.
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker, a popular Christmas ballet composed by Peter Ilych Tchaicovsky, premiered in 1892. The plot was an adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ short story of the same name, itself a retelling of Hoffman’s short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. While the ballet itself was met with lukewarm reviews upon its Saint Petersburg premiere, the Nutcracker Suite, a collection of its songs, became an instant classic when it was first performed eight months before the ballet. Disney’s movie Fantasia even excerpted parts of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Russian Dance for its soundtrack.
In 1934, Nicholas Sergeyev staged The Nutcracker’s first complete performance outside of Russia in England. When the New York City Ballet gave its first rendition of the ballet in 1954 with the incomparable Maria Tallchief, it became a cultural phenomenon and soon became the Christmas tradition it is today.
Cookies for Santa
Leaving out gifts for supernatural figures is a practice as old as time. At the very least, we can trace it back to the ancient Scandinavians, who would leave food out for Odin’s eight-legged horse in December in the hopes that Odin would reward them with gifts. The first modern mention of “cookies for Santa” popped up in the 1870s with the short story Polly: A Before Christmas Story
The tradition really took off in the 1930s after the stock market crash of 1929 kicked off the Great Depression. In these difficult economic conditions, parents encouraged their children to leave cookies out for Santa as a signal of altruism and gratitude for their gifts. While this practice may have taught an entire generation the virtue of gratitude, it had an equally large impact on Santa’s belly; from the mid 1800s into the early 1900s, Santa transformed from a tall, gaunt man into the rotund fellow we know well today.
(Given the trendiness of exercise and weight-loss routines, this author finds it strange that Santa hasn’t lost weight in the past hundred years. Maybe he’ll get a prescription for Ozempic soon…
Ugly Christmas Sweaters
You love to hate them–our favorite wooly sweaters, usually in a shade of blood red or vomitous green, with Christmas patterns and bonus points for a snazzy pom-pom. Though this Christmas tradition is so firmly entrenched in our culture that it seems like it’s been around forever, it’s actually a relatively new phenomenon. Holiday-themed sweaters first entered the market in the 50s, and they really entered the zeitgeist in the 80s only to fall out of favor in the 90s. The ugly garments’ resurgence was led by Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001, which featured Colin Farrel in a stereotypically unattractive jumper. By the 2010s, ugly sweaters had gained camp appeal as a tongue-in-cheek fashion, with the charity Save the Children inaugurating its annual Christmas Jumper fundraiser in 2012.
Menorahs
Menorahs are nine-branched candelabra lit during Hanukkah. The center candle is used to light one of the other eight candles every night until all nine are lit on the final day of the holiday. The first menorah was forged by the goldsmith Bezalel for the Tabernacle, and Judas Maccabeus placed one in the Second Temple. While these renditions notably had only seven arms, Hanukkah menorahs have nine. According to the Talmud, after an invasion of Jerusalem there was only enough consecrated oil to fuel the eternal fire in the Jewish Temple for a day; however, the flame continued to burn for eight days, and Hanukkah started as a celebration of this miraculous light. Beside the central candle, there is one candle on every menorah for each day this flame kept burning.
Bodhi Day
Bodhi Day is an annual Buddhist holiday that celebrates the day that Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment; it is celebrated on December eighth. According to tradition, Siddhartha Gautama had spent years seeking the answer to the problem of suffering until he decided to meditate under a bodhi tree in the village of Bodh Gaya. Resolving to not rest until he had reached enlightenment, he sat through the night facing east and emerged in the morning with the answer to his problem: knowledge of his past lives, knowledge of karma and reincarnation, and the Four Noble Truths. Celebrations of this holiday include studying Buddha’s teachings and chanting sutras. Buddhists traditionally eat a simple meal of rice and milk on Bodhi day to reflect Siddhartha’s simple sustenance, and families with small children often bake cookies in the shape of a Bodhi leaf.
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