Small meaningful gifts for her Long before the arrival of Christianity, northern Europeans used plants and trees to decorate their homes to celebrate festivals that coincided with the winter solstice. The Christmas tree that we recognize today, however, is a tradition that dates much later, to the beginning of the 17th century in Strasbourg. It was not until a visit by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Strasbourg – when he witnessed a Christmas tree firsthand and recorded it in his 1774 novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther" – that the custom spread across Germany.
While German settlers did erect trees in Pennsylvania, they are not responsible for the mass acceptance of the tree in American society, says Stephen Nissenbaum, author of "The Battle for Christmas." It was introduced in the United States in the 1830s by intellectuals pushing for ways to make Christmas less commercial and more rooted in tradition, he says. The first image of a Christmas tree printed in the US was in Boston in 1836. It is widely believed that a photo in 1848 of German Prince Albert and his wife, Queen Victoria, next to a Small meaningful gifts for her tree led to its mass appeal on both sides of the Atlantic.
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