At the beginning of this century a family of Swedes settled in
northern Illinois among Germans. They had never had the Christmas tree tradition
and they didn't have much money for ornaments. They hung their silver knives
and forks and spoons on the tree.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Bible for All Antique Christmas Ornament Lovers!,
By
This review is from: The Christmas Tree Book (Paperback)
The late Phillip Snyder wrote this definitive book on the history of the Christmas tree and antique Christmas ornaments. Phil featured wonderful color photos of rare pieces from his own vast collection, and his book has a very readable and well-written text to accompany them. THE CHRISTMAS TREE BOOK motivated untold hundreds, perhaps thousands of collectors world-wide, to start digging through antique shops and Grandma's attic for those beautiful, gossamer-thin blown glass German ornaments from Victorian days. And it introduced readers to the scarce "Dresden" Christmas ornaments, so rare before this book that most antique dealers never recognized them! Made of pressed cardboard in two halves, they were taken home and painstakingly glued and assembled into animals, carriages and an endless variety of detailed shapes by cottage workers in Dresden, Germany in the 1870-1920 period. Readers are forewarned that Mr. Snyder's book will either bring a nostalgic longing for your own childhood Christmases, or send you scurring to YOUR Grandmother's attic looking for her beautiful, rare Holiday decorations of yesteryear. I had the pleasure of knowing Phil Snyder and collecting with him for a number of years; all early Christmas ornament buffs are a lot sadder for his early passing. We are certainly thankful for and well-rewarded by this legacy of his scholarly book. In additon, I would personally recommend you read Phil Snyder's second book on early Christmas, DECEMBER 25, also still available through your Amazon network of dealers. The photo he used on the back cover of a feather tree full of Dresdens was my tree!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A LOVING TRIBUTE TO CHRISTMAS TREES AND RELATED TRADITIONS,
By
This review is from: The Christmas Tree Book (Paperback)
Phillip Snyder (born 1936) is also the author of December 25th: The Joys of Christmas Past. He wrote in the Preface to this 1976 book, "This book is dedicated to the innocent childlike side of our nature, which perpetuates this happiest of customs." (This book reportedly made old-fashioned Christmas tree ornaments one of America's most popular "collectibles.")
Here are some quotations from the book (NOTE: Page numbers are from the 176-page 1976 Penguin large paperback edition): "Nevertheless, it is to Germany that we must look for the development of the Christmas tree tradition. We know, for instance, that in 1531 in Alsace, then a German territory but now part of France, Christmas trees were sold in the Strasbourg market and taken into homes where they were set up undecorated for the holiday." (Pg. 11) "The oldest Christmas tree to be decorated standing in a parlor as we know the tradition today is a fragment of a 1605 travel diary left us by an unidentified visitor to Strasbourg... By the seventeenth century, then, the age-old, winter-defying evergreen was a common sight in Christian homes honoring the Christ Child each Christmas." (Pg. 13) "According to an old story, Luther was out walking on Christmas Eve, when the stars gave him the idea of putting numerous candles on a fir tree to impress his son with the message of Christmas---that the Christ Child is the light of the world. Today historians call this mere folklore, since the first evidence of a lighted tree of any sort appears more than a century after Luther's death in 1546." (Pg. 19) "Though (Charles Dickens') name is synonymous with our ideas of how to keep Christmas, there is no mention of a Christmas tree in 'A Christmas Carol,' written in 1843, or in any of his later Christmas novels and short stories." (Pg. 23) "Only one American family in five had a Christmas tree in 1900... In the first years of the twentieth century the custom spread like wildfire... By 1930 the tree had become a nearly universal part of the American Christmas." (Pg. 40) "One special pleasure afforded by these old-fashioned edible Christmas tree decorations has been all but lost to us today. Traditionally, the tantilizing cookies and sweetmeats ... were supposed to stay in place until the tree was taken down on the Twelfth Night, when they could finally be eaten. Therefore, the inevitable final dismantling, so disappointing to today's children, was once an exciting, anticipated, and delicious climax to the Christmas season." (Pg. 52) "After Christmas, trees did not dry out quickly because houses were not as well heated or well insulated as they are today. Each night the room in which the tree stood became a natural ice box. But with each passing year there were more Christmas trees, and more fires." (Pg. 105) "Surprisingly, there was almost no editorial outcry against Christmas tree candles in the newspapers and magazines of the day... By the early 1900s many people had become sufficiently frightened by tree-fire stories to forgo the old pleasure of a candle-lit tree. Others couldn't give it up, even though they worried every time they lit the candles." (Pg. 107-108)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another Christmas Gem from Snyder,
By
This review is from: The Christmas Tree Book (Paperback)
After enjoying and purchasing Snyder's DECEMBER 25: THE JOYS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, I also snapped up this volume. Snyder again uses magazines and newspapers of the era (when possible, since he goes back to the 15th century) to trace the history of the Christmas tree and its two important festoons, the ornaments and the lights. This includes a fascinating section on the Christmas cookies that were used to decorate the tree, the story of how the Germans' tabletop tree became the floor-to-ceiling American variety, and the trend from candles to "lighting outfits" (do you know that one of the things that caused the decline of the Christmas tree candle was the refusal of insurance companies to honor policies if the fire was caused by a "known danger," i.e. tipped candles on the tree?). Snyder even talks about the rather unsavory conditions under which those beautiful kugels and other German ornaments were created back when Frank Woolworth first encountered them to bring them to the United States. If you are interested in the history of Christmas tree ornaments or decorating, this book is definitely worth hunting up. Comes with dozens of photos (both black and white and color) of vintage Christmas tree ornaments.
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