I går pynta vi treet.

Etter å ha kjøpt og bragt treet hjem, blitt møtt av jublende døtre i trappa og dekket busken i bling, kjente jeg en viss overraskelse over følelsene som kom. Hvorfor betyr denne grana så mye? Der og da var det ingen av oss som kunne klart forklare buskens historie, hvor kom den fra og hvordan kom den til oss? Men det kan Internett:

The use of evergreens […] to decorate homes around the winter solstice is a European tradition that goes back centuries. Then in Germany medieval Christians began decorating evergreen trees with apples to symbolise the garden of Eden. This eventually morphed into the tradition of Christmas trees as we know them now where it stopped being apples, and many other ornaments took their places and you eventually get what we are used to seeing in homes today. However, decorating Christmas trees really did not spread far beyond its German roots until the 1840s when queen Victoria encouraged Prince Albert who was born in Germany to decorate a tree as he had done when he was a child. Once a sketch of the Royal family next to their tree appeared in The (Illustrated) London News, […] Christmas trees became extremely fashionable…

Og det lærte jet i dag tidlig, på vei til jobb, av en av verdens beste podcaster; Stuff You Missed in History Class ((feed-url)), i episoden Christmas Tree Ship ((episode-url)). Podcasten har tilogmed en egen “Missed in history” bloggpost med masse esker kildehenvisninger:)

Og er du klar for lift dybde-/lengdelesning er denne litt lengre artikkelen fra history.com verdt et besøk!