in England, he got hold of a fir tree and had it ornamented for his family. The people of England were so overwhelmed, that the idea caught on quickly, and before long everyone in England wanted their own “Christmas tree” in their homes.
This practice slowly extended to the new world. Initially, the Puritans who instituted our country barred Christmas worldly celebrations. In 1851, a Cleveland minister allowed a Christmas tree in his church and almost lost his job because of it. During that same year, the practice became part of the free market economy when a farmer named Mark Carr produced and dragged two sleds of evergreen trees to New York City. In spite of the Puritans’ early struggle to the tradition, the idea of Christmas trees grew in the United States. At the turn of 1900, one in five American homes had a Christmas tree. Christmas tree farms started to sprang up and farmers could barley meet the demand.
During 1890, a man by the name of F.W. Woolworth initiated to the United States the thought of decorating a tree with glass knick-knacks. Blown glass decorations had long been a custom in Europe. From 1870 to the 1930s, Germans created the finest glass ornaments of that time. German glass blowers were accounted to have had nearly 5,000 different molds for variations and different styles of Christmas ornaments. At the turn of the century, there were over one hundred small glass blowing shops in Europe that were all producing Christmas stuff. These days there are only two German glass-blowing factories that are capable of making the accuracy required for fashionable ornament collections such as Christopher Radko.
The reputation of the Christmas tree continues to develop. The National Christmas