So far as it is possible to gather from history, the Christmas tree, as we know it to-day, made its first appearance in Strassburgh. This is interesting in view of the fact that one of the earliest legends in explanation of the custom finds its home in that city. More authentic witness is afforded by an old manuscript still preserved in a library at Friedburg, Germany, which was written by a citizen of Strassburgh in the year 1608. This manuscript speaks of a tree all alight with candles and bedecked with presents as being a regular feature of the Christmas festivities of that time. Therefore we are sure that the Christmas tree had come into common use in this region by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Further than that there is no certainty.
The custom appears to have spread from Strassburgh to the neighboring cities along the Rhine and to have flourished in that limited district for fully two hundred years.
Suddenly, about the beginning of the nineteenth century, it made its appearance outside of the Rhenish towns in other nearby localities, until finally it had invaded the whole of Germany. Fifty years later it had conquered nearly all Christendom.
In the year 1825 the English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, visited Germany to spend the winter months in that country. One of his letters written in the following January speaks of the Christmas tree as something entirely unknown to his fellow countrymen.
“There is a Christmas custom here,” he says, “which pleased and interested me. The children make little presents to their parents and to each other and the parents to their children. For three or four months before Christmas the girls are all busy and the boys save up their pocket money to buy these presents. What the present is to be is cautiously kept secret; and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it—such as working when they are out on visits, and the others are not with them; getting up in the morning before daylight and so forth. Then, on the evening before Christmas day, one of the parlors is lighted up by the children, into which the parents must not go; a great yew-bough is fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a multitude of little tapers are fixed in the bough, but not so as to burn it till they are nearly consumed, and colored paper, etc., hangs and flutters from the twigs.
“Under this bough the children lay out, in great order, the presents they mean for their parents, still concealing in their pockets what they intend for each other. Then the parents are introduced and each presents his little gift; they then bring out the remainder, one by one, from their pockets, and present them with kisses and embraces. Where I witnessed this scene, there were eight or nine children, and the oldest daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped all his children so tight to his breast, it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within it. I was very much affected. The shadow of the bough and its appendages on the wall, and arching over on the ceiling, made a pretty picture; and then the raptures of the very little ones, when at last the twigs and their needles began to take fire and snap—O! it was a delight to them!
“On the next day (Christmas day) in the great parlor, the parents lay out on the table the presents for the children; a scene of more sober joy succeeds; as on this day, after an old custom, the mother says privately to each of her daughters and the father to his sons, that which he has observed most praise-worthy and that which was most faulty in their conduct.”
Continuing, Coleridge tells us that formerly, and still in all the smaller towns and villages throughout North Germany, these presents were sent by all the parents to some young fellows, who, in high buskins, a white robe, a mask, and an enormous flax wig personates Knecht Ruprecht, i. e. the servant Rupert.
“On Christmas night he goes round to every house, and says that Jesus Christ, his Master, sent him thither. The parents and elder children receive him with great pomp and reverence, while the little ones are most terribly frightened. He then inquires for the children, and according to the character which he hears from the parents, he gives them the intended presents, as if they came out of heaven from Jesus Christ, or if they should have been bad children, he gives the parents a rod, and, in name of his Master, recommends them to use it frequently. About seven or eight years old, the children are let into the secret, and it is curious how faithfully they keep it.”