Encyclopedia of Christmas

"This is a wonderful resource, now published in paperback. It not only has all kinds of interesting articles, but bibliographies if you want to explore things further. If I get stuck, it’s the first place I go to answer questions like: How did we get the candle? Or what is the nutcracker? Or that the name for the Roman new year festival, Kalends , is where we get the term “calendar” from. The Christmas tree is mostly of German background, dating back to the 17th century and widespread by the 18th century. I think of Christmas as like a snowball which you roll, and which picks things up along the way. The snowball rolls very interestingly here. The German influences reach England because of the House of Hanover, so the German Christmas tree gets brought to England. Then the prints of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with a Christmas tree are published, and cause great interest in the United States. That’s how the Christmas tree becomes popular in the US. That’s a complicated history. In the Church we’d like to say that it has to do with the wise men bringing gifts to baby Jesus, starting a gift-giving tradition. For much of Christmas history, gift-giving was more token, and sometimes was on St Nicholas’s day rather than on Christmas. But more recently – since the 1800s – it has become a great Christmas tradition. Gifts were given in different ways over time. Early on it was in a stocking, then it was under a small Christmas tree on a table. Now, of course, the Christmas tree has gotten bigger and is on the floor. And the gifts have grown and grown. I love it! Wonderful."