On the day of the winter solstice, the first day of winter and the first day of the new year, the Celts brought gifts to the apple tree, decorated it, adorned it and cajoled it in every possible way. They asked the spirits that the coming year be fruitful and full. And then they sang and danced all night. Maybe they even danced around the New Year’s apple tree.
Jewelry gifts were mostly edible: fruits, nuts, animal entrails. The evergreen spruce Celts also dressed up. But since this tree was considered by them a symbol of evil and the abode of a forest spirit that demanded bloody sacrifices, then “toys” were appropriate. Then the tradition of decorating trees disappeared along with the Celts and was revived again only in the 15th century in Germany.
freiburg tree
Germany is considered the ancestor of Christmas trees and Christmas decorations. At least the first mention of a Christmas tree decorated for the holiday has come down to us from the archives of the city of Freiburg.
By the way, the tradition to decorate their houses with spruce branches and other evergreen conifers for the holiday was born long before the first German Christmas tree. But these branches were decoration in themselves, without additional tinsel.
In 1419, a Freiburg baker decided to celebrate Christmas with an unprecedented festivity: he decorated the fir tree growing near his bakery with all sorts of different goodies: apples and pears, cookies and nuts, wafers and sweets.
In this outfit, the fir-tree remained for a whole week (with or without security, the story is silent). And on the first day of the new year, the baker announced that now his Christmas tree “plündern durften” – you can steal!
Local children and the poor at this time shook the Christmas tree and celebrated the New Year beautifully.
This is how the tradition of decorating the Christmas tree was born.
delicious toys
The first Christmas decorations were edible. I mean, Christmas trees haven’t been decorated with anything but food for a hundred years. Everything that was in the house was used: fruits and vegetables, waffles and gingerbread, powdered sugar and sweets. In general, it was like a festive table laid for the New Year.
And then paper roses were added to apples and pies, and colored eggshells were added to sweets. The nuts are wrapped in foil. And also hang bows made of multi-colored fabric and pieces of colored paper on the Christmas tree.
But apples have always been the most important decoration on the Christmas tree.
At the beginning of the 17th century, a special machine for the production of New Year’s tinsel was invented and built in Germany. The finest silver leaf was used as the starting material. A little later, tinsel began to be made from silver or gold threads. So, the world’s first “rain” was a real piece of jewelry, although the word “tinsel” itself means “fake” or “fake”.
In the middle of the 18th century, extravagant decorations made of foreign “apples of the earth” appeared on Christmas trees in European cities – silver or golden potatoes. This fashion did not last long. In 1772, thanks largely to the efforts of French agronomist and pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, “earth apples” were finally recognized as edible, as well as useful and nutritious. And potatoes migrated from Christmas trees to Christmas tables.
At the end of the 18th century, delicious Christmas toys gave way to beautiful New Year trees. But apples, sweets and nuts in shiny foil did not leave their positions.
In general, Christmas dresses have become more diverse. Christmas trees began to be decorated with silver stars, golden cones, bronze fairies, paper angels and bells. And also fresh flowers, most often poinsettia, a Christmas star.
Since the outfits appeared, it means that the trends appeared.
The first couturiers and their Christmas tree designers were still a long way off, so the fashion for decorating Christmas trees was generally dictated by monarchs. One of these legislators of Christmas fashion was the King of Westphalia and brother of Napoleon I, Jerome Bonaparte. He once decorated the Christmas tree with letters wrapped in shiny wrapping paper. According to the king’s plan, his courtiers were supposed to take off these letters and read them aloud during the New Year’s celebration. And what was written there – good wishes or some kind of barbs – history is silent.
Crystal Balls
The history of the Christmas tree once began with an apple tree. And the story of glass Christmas balls is about apples. More precisely, from the poor apple harvest that occurred in 1848.
Germany then approached the party of the year without the main Christmas decorations. Christmas was saved by glassblowers from the city of Lauscha in Thuringia, they made a replacement for apples – glass balls. From the inside, these balls were covered with a layer of lead and therefore looked silver, and were sprinkled with sparkles on top.
However, there is another legend. It seems that there lived a poor glass blower in the city of Lauscha, who at Christmas did not have a single apple at home to decorate the Christmas tree. And then he blew the apples out of the glass.
Be that as it may, Laush’s glass apples instantly conquered all the Christmas markets in Europe. And for many years, Lauška glassblowers were monopolists in the market for Christmas decorations. Until they were rejected by teachers from Bohemia and Moselle.
At the end of the 19th century, there were no toys on European Christmas trees! Crystal fruit and vegetables, bunches of grapes and fir cones from Moselle artisans. Dresden’s embossed cardboard toys are mostly animal figurines. Bavarian butterflies, stars, miniature musical instruments and metallic icicles. And many many others. But there were no accounts.
Although hollow glass beads from Germany have been known for a long time. The method of manufacturing and plating from the inside was developed in the early 17th century by the German glassblower Hans Greiner. And in 1870, the master Justus Liebig from Jablonec (then this city belonged to Austria-Hungary, today the Czech Republic) began to string glass beads onto thin wire and bend various figures: spiders, beetles, dragonflies, stars, baskets, candlesticks. , watches, etc. These Christmas toys, which came to be called “Jablonets” or “Gablonzer” in the German manner, were very popular in Europe.
But Justus Liebig did not think to string the same beads on a long thread and hang them on a Christmas tree.
This was done by Russian glassblowers.
russian beads
The same year that the apple harvests in Germany failed and glass blowers from Laush made the first glass balls to replace them, Prince Alexander Sergeevich Menshikov ordered the construction of a small glass factory for 80 jobs on his estate. Alexandrov in the Krugovsky volost of the Klinsky district. . It was supposed to meet the needs of one’s own estate, and then how things would go.
Things went well right away. In addition to lamps, vases, bottles, and other small glass items for the estate, the plant soon began producing apothecary glassware, bottles, and window glass for sale. In 1876, 176 people already worked at the Menshikov factory. The glass business brought a good income – 45,000 rubles a year.
Very soon, small craft workshops began to appear around the Menshikov factory: the peasants, having mastered the art of glassblowing, taught their sons this craft in order to work not “for an uncle”, but for a family.
Such production did not require large investments. Of the equipment, only a kerosene burner was needed, connected to the bellows with a leather tube. And raw materials could be bought for a penny at the factory.
The glassblowers themselves called this trade “nonsense”, because they usually produced a few small things like buttons, simple earrings, or other simple jewelry for girls. All these products were sold at fairs and were in great demand.
In 1887, two peasant glassblowers from Klin, Yegor Vekshin and Yakov Orlov, “reinvented the bicycle” by Hans Greiner and learned how to blow small hollow glass beads. They did not keep their know-how a secret, they shared it with other artisans.
The whole family used to participate in the production of beads: the craftsman would blow the beads into a small burner, his wife would dye them, the children would string them on horsehair. One thread, three, five rows – any color and for every taste. At the fair, those beads flew.
It is unknown who and when hung a necklace of glass beads on the Christmas tree. Maybe some girl decided to share the decoration with the Christmas tree. Or maybe some master decided to use unsold accounts on a branch in this way. Or the children were playing, who knows.
But one way or another, a new one appeared in the collection of Christmas decorations, which quickly became the most beloved, the most traditional – glass beads.
The low price of its production played an important role, and, accordingly, the low price. In those years in Russia, a decorated Christmas tree was not so much a symbol of the holiday, but a demonstration of wealth and luxury. Glass Christmas toys were imported and sold at exorbitant prices.
A fully decorated Christmas tree costs an average of 200 rubles – this is the annual income of a doctor or a four-year salary of a small office worker. Even very rich people could only rent Czech or German Christmas decorations. Most of the city’s inhabitants traditionally decorated their Christmas trees with gingerbread, foil-wrapped nuts, fruits and sweets, colored ribbons, rag toys and more. And in the houses of the villages, Christmas trees were not put up at all for the New Year. Why is this, a joke.
And then beads suddenly appeared – cheap, beautiful, shiny, very expensive to see. And what an impressive benefit they brought to the owners of craft workshops!
Work in the glass workshops began to boil. Buttons were pushed aside, beads were attached to the thread.
The glassworks owners, of course, became interested in the profitable new industry. At that time, in the Klin district, rich in raw materials for the production of glass, there were already several such factories: in Aleksandrovo, in Vostryakovo, in Klin itself. And in these factories, the production of glass beads for Christmas trees also quickly got underway.
In 1896, glass beads for Christmas trees were presented at the 16th All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. From that very moment, the Klinsky district began to be considered the cradle of the Christmas tree craft and the ancestor of glass beads.
No matter how Christmas fashion changes, no matter what new trends designers offer us, our Christmas trees will always have the traditional balls, beads and apples. Even if they are plastic, not real.
***
This article and many other materials are published on the ©IPQuorum website, the first publication in Russia on creative industries and intellectual property. IPQuorum is a new format for the work of an international brand that organizes all the brightest events in the world of intellectual property and creative industries in Russia, including the LegalTech market and development institutions. IPQuorum professes an editorial policy based on evidence and demonstrates with reliable facts and destinies that innovations today arise at the intersection of different ideas and industries.
