Christmas is just around the corner and it is time to get into the spirit of things. For most people, Christmas means buying gifts for family members and friends, preparing delicious food and decorating the house with festive lights. But do you know that Christmas trees are not only ornamental but can also teach kids a lot of things?
Here are 15 amazing facts about Christmas trees that will captivate any child
- Christmas trees are evergreen plants that stay green throughout the year. They have needles rather than leaves or flowers and their needles grow in groups or rows called fascicles, which contain two needles each.
- The tallest living Christmas tree is named Stratosphere Giant and it is located in the Black Hills Forest in South Dakota. It stands at 109 feet tall!
- The first artificial Christmas tree was made by a German immigrant named Edward C. Moore who lived in New York City back in 1880s. He made fake trees out of cotton batting, wire and colored paper so as to avoid fire hazard caused by live trees!
- The largest artificial tree was created by an Ohio man named Jim Bolin who used 20,000 lights on his huge 151-foot tree which weighed more than 6 tons.
- The fir tree is the most popular Christmas tree grown in the US and Canada, but there are many others.
- A Norway spruce can live up to 600 years!
- Christmas trees have been around since ancient times, with one found in a cave in Bethlehem dating back to 325 BC. The largest artificial Christmas tree was made in 2015 and stands at 42 feet high!
- The first artificial Christmas tree was sold in the United States in 1923 for $20 (about $300 today).
- Christmas trees were once considered a symbol of paganism and banned by the Catholic Church.
- It takes approximately 5 million Christmas trees every year to supply all U.S households with holiday cheer.
- According to National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA), an organization that promotes real Christmas tree use and encourages sustainable forestry practices in growing trees for this purpose, over 35 million real Christmas trees are sold each year in the United States alone! All these trees need come from somewhere though…and that somewhere is usually Canada!
- Christmas trees are a symbol of Christmas and winter. The tradition of putting up a Christmas tree started in Germany in the 16th century.
- tradition of decorating Christmas trees may have originated from the ancient custom of bringing evergreen boughs into houses and decorating them at the winter solstice for New Year’s celebrations.
- In 1441, Albert the Prince-Bishop of Brandenburg ordered the people of his country to put up fir trees during Advent as a symbol of “the glory of life everlasting”.
- In 1605, Queen Elizabeth I introduced an Act of Parliament requiring all English households to display a bough or branch of green laurel at their open windows on December 24th each year until Epiphany (January 6th).