Editing Christmas tree (section)

=====''Britain''=====
[[File:Christmas Tree 1848.jpg|thumb|An engraving published in the 1840s of [[Queen Victoria]] and [[Albert, Prince Consort|Prince Albert]] created a craze for Christmas trees.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/12068658/Queens-Christmas-Day-message-Monarch-quotes-from-Bible-to-address-a-nation-shaken-by-year-of-atrocities.html |title=Queen's Christmas Day message: Monarch quotes from Bible to address a nation shaken by year of atrocities |last=Bingham |first=John |date=25 December 2016 |website=[[telegraph.co.uk]] |access-date=25 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171227124150/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/12068658/Queens-Christmas-Day-message-Monarch-quotes-from-Bible-to-address-a-nation-shaken-by-year-of-atrocities.html |archive-date=27 December 2017 }}</ref>]]

Although the tradition of decorating churches and homes with evergreens at Christmas was long established,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42959/42959-h/42959-h.htm#Footnote_213_213|title=Survey of London|last=Stow|first=John|publisher=John Windet|year=1603|location=London|quote=Against the feast of Christmas every man's house, as also the parish churches, were decked with holm, ivy, bays, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green.|access-date=3 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170816193124/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42959/42959-h/42959-h.htm#Footnote_213_213|archive-date=16 August 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> the custom of decorating an entire small tree was unknown in Britain until the 19th century. The German-born [[Queen Charlotte]] introduced a Christmas tree at a party she gave for children in 1800.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/christmas/christmas_tree.html|title=The History of the Christmas Tree at Windsor|access-date=3 January 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111224161224/http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/christmas/christmas_tree.html|archive-date=24 December 2011|url-status=live}}</ref> The custom did not at first spread much beyond the royal family.{{efn|In 1829 the diarist [[Charles Greville (diarist)|Greville]], visiting [[Panshanger]] country house, describes three small Christmas trees "such as is customary in Germany", which [[Dorothea Lieven|Princess Lieven]] had put up.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hole|first=Christine|title=English Custom and Usage|year=1950|publisher=B. T. Batsford Ltd.|location=London|page=16}}</ref>}} [[Queen Victoria]], as a child, was familiar with it and a tree was placed in her room every Christmas. In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the delighted 13-year-old princess wrote:<ref>{{cite book |title=The girlhood of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty's diaries |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.02324/11132.E13917_The_Girlhood_of_Queen_Victoria_vol_I/page/61/mode/2up |publisher=J. Murray |year=1912 |author=Victoria |author-link=Queen Victoria |editor=Viscount Esher |editor-link=Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher}}</ref>

{{blockquote|After dinner{{nbsp}}[...] we then went into the drawing room near the dining room{{nbsp}}[...] There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees{{nbsp}}[...]}}

In the year following Victoria's marriage to her German cousin [[Albert, Prince Consort|Prince Albert]], in 1841, the custom became even more widespread<ref>{{cite book |author=Marie Claire Lejeune |title=Compendium of symbolic and ritual plants in Europe |page=550 |publisher=Man & Culture |isbn=978-90-77135-04-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g5GBAAAAMAAJ |year=2002 }}</ref> as wealthier middle-class families followed the fashion. In 1842, a newspaper advertisement for Christmas trees makes clear their smart cachet, German origins and association with children and gift-giving.<ref>"GERMAN CHRISTMAS TREES. The nobility and gentry are respectfully informed that these handsome JUVENILE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS are supplied and elegantly fitted up{{nbsp}}...":''Times'' [London, England] 20 December 1842, p.&nbsp;1.</ref> An illustrated book, ''The Christmas Tree'', describing their use and origins in detail, was on sale in December 1844.<ref>''The Christmas Tree'': published by Darton and Clark, London. "The ceremony of the Christmas tree, so well known throughout Germany, bids fair to be welcomed among us, with the other festivities of the season, especially now the Queen, within her own little circle, has set the fashion, by introducing it on the Christmas Eve in her own regal palace." Book review of ''The Christmas Tree'' from the Weekly Chronicle, 14 December 1844, quoted in an advert headlined "A new pleasure for Christmas" in ''The Times'', 23 December 1844, p.&nbsp;8.</ref>

On 2{{nbsp}}January 1846, Elizabeth Fielding (née Fox Strangways) wrote from [[Lacock Abbey]] to [[Henry Fox Talbot|William Henry Fox-Talbot]]: "Constance is extremely busy preparing the [[Bohemia]]n Xmas Tree. It is made from Caroline's<ref>Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); William Henry Fox-Talbot's half-sister.</ref> description of those she saw in Germany".<ref>Correspondence of William Henry Fox-Talbot, British Library, London, Manuscripts—Fox Talbot Collection, envelope 20179 [http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/letters/transcriptName.php?bcode=Talb-WH&pageNumber=5029&pageTotal=10047&referringPage=251] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210511191033/http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/letters/transcriptName.php?bcode=Talb-WH&pageNumber=5029&pageTotal=10047&referringPage=251|date=11 May 2021}}.</ref>

In 1847, Prince Albert wrote: "I must now seek in the children an echo of what [[Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha|Ernest]] [his brother] and I were in the old time, of what we felt and thought; and their delight in the Christmas trees is not less than ours used to be".<ref>{{cite book |title=The Prince Consort, Man of many Facets: The World and The Age of Prince Albert |author=Godfrey and Margaret Scheele |page=78 |publisher=Oresko Books |year=1977 |isbn=978-0-905368-06-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NcFm-0s54HIC }}</ref>

A boost to the trend was given in 1848<ref>At the beginning of the year the custom was well-enough known for ''The Times'' to compare the January budget of 1848 with gifts handed out beneath "the Christmas tree": ''The Times'' (London, England), 21 January 1848, p.&nbsp;4.</ref> when ''[[The Illustrated London News]]'',<ref>Special Christmas supplement edition, published 23 December 1848.</ref> in a report picked up by other papers,<ref>''The Times'' (London, England), 27 December 1848. p. 7</ref> described the trees in [[Windsor Castle]] in detail and showed the main tree, surrounded by the royal family, on its cover. In fewer than ten years, the adoption of the tradition in middle and upper-class homes was widespread. By 1856, a northern provincial newspaper contained an advert alluding casually to them,<ref>"Now the best Christmas box / You can give to the young / Is not toys, nor fine playthings, / Nor trees gaily hung{{nbsp}}...": Manchester Guardian, Saturday, 5{{nbsp}}January 1856, p.&nbsp;6.</ref> as well as reporting the accidental death of a woman whose dress caught fire as she lit the tapers on a Christmas tree.<ref>''Manchester Guardian'', 24 January 1856, p.&nbsp;3: the death of Caroline Luttrell of [[Kilve Court]], Somerset.</ref> They had not yet spread down the social scale though, as a report from Berlin in 1858 contrasts the situation there where "Every family has its own" with that of Britain, where Christmas trees were still the preserve of the wealthy or the "romantic".<ref>''The Times'' (London, England), 28 December 1858, p. 8.</ref>

Their use at public entertainments, charity bazaars and in hospitals made them increasingly familiar however, and in 1906 a charity was set up specifically to ensure even poor children in London slums "who had never seen a Christmas tree" would enjoy one that year.<ref>The Poor Children's Yuletide Association. ''The Times'' (London, England), 20 December 1906, p.&nbsp;2. "The association sent 71 trees 'bearing thousands of toys' to the poorest districts of London."</ref> Anti-German sentiment after World War{{nbsp}}I briefly reduced their popularity<ref>"A Merry Christmas": ''The Times'' (London, England), 27 December 1918, p.&nbsp;2: "...{{nbsp}}the so-called "Christmas tree" was out of favour. Large stocks of young firs were to be seen at Covent Garden on Christmas Eve, but found few buyers. It was remembered that the 'Christmas tree' has enemy associations."</ref> but the effect was short-lived,<ref>The next year a charity fair in aid of injured soldiers featured 'a huge Christmas-tree'. 'St. Dunstan's Christmas Fair'. ''The Times'' (London, England), 20 December 1919, p.&nbsp;9.</ref> and by the mid-1920s the use of Christmas trees had spread to all classes.<ref>'Poor families in Lewisham and similar districts are just as particular about the shape of their trees as people in Belgravia{{nbsp}}...' 'Shapely Christmas Trees': ''The Times'' (London, England), 17 December 1926, p.&nbsp;11.</ref> In 1933, a restriction on the importation of foreign trees led to the "rapid growth of a new industry" as the growing of Christmas trees within Britain became commercially viable due to the size of demand.<ref>Christmas Tree Plantations. ''The Times'' (London, England), 11 December 1937, p.&nbsp;11.</ref> By 2013, the number of trees grown in Britain for the Christmas market was approximately eight million<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25117501|title=Christmas tree grower Ivor Dungey gets award|work=BBC News|access-date=21 June 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180731014120/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25117501|archive-date=31 July 2018|url-status=live|date=27 November 2013}}</ref> and their display in homes, shops and public spaces a normal part of the Christmas season.