The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) visited Mecklenburg-Strelitz in December, 1798, and was much struck by the yew-branch ceremony that he witnessed there, the following account of which he wrote in a letter to his wife dated April 23rd, 1799: And in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where Queen Charlotte grew up, it was the custom to deck out a single yew branch. In other parts of Germany box trees or yews were brought indoors at Christmas instead of firs. and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold-foil, sweets, etc.’ For in that year an anonymous writer recorded how at Yuletide the inhabitants of Strasburg ‘set up fir trees in the parlours. This wondrous sight inspired him to set up a candle-lit fir tree in his house that Christmas to remind his children of the starry heavens from whence their Saviour came.Ĭertainly by 1605 decorated Christmas trees had made their appearance in Southern Germany. One winter’s night in 1536, so the story goes, Luther was walking through a pine forest near his home in Wittenberg when he suddenly looked up and saw thousands of stars glinting jewel-like among the branches of the trees. Legend has it that Queen Charlotte’s compatriot, Martin Luther, the religious reformer, invented the Christmas tree.
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However, the honour of establishing this tradition in the United Kingdom rightfully belongs to ‘good Queen Charlotte’, the German wife of George III, who set up the first known English tree at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, in December, 1800. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, is usually credited with having introduced the Christmas tree into England in 1840.