Nicole

“By whatever name, and however displayed, by the 1770s and 1780s, trees were an integral part of the German Christmas, whether a small tree in a pot placed on a table, a fir-tree tip hanging point downwards from the ceiling, a tree, point upwards, with the end sharpened and spearing an apple, or, among Pietist or evangelical communities, branches decorated with candles and sweets placed on wooden pyramid frames. This German tradition travelled to England in the final quarter of the eighteenth century.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“Now Santa put toys, fruit and nuts in the stockings of good children, while bad children got coal, or birch switches, which was better than back in Zurich, where bad children received horse manure and rotten vines (although not yet in stockings). In Zurich, Samichlaus also brought trees for all children, while in Germany the Christmas tree remained, for the moment, something for the prosperous and the urban. The less prosperous became familiar with the custom in institutions – in schools, hospitals, orphanages and the like – where they had become a feature of charitable giving: patrons and donors attended candle-lighting ceremonies, at which carols were sung and gifts were handed to the poor.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“There was no more the stoop of her high”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“the tree was a Weihnachtsbaum, or Tannenbaum, a Christmas or fir tree; Protestantism became ‘the Tannenbaum religion’, and the trees were sometimes Lutherbäume, [Martin] Luther trees. Where Catholic regions adopted the tree, it became a Christbaum, a Lichterbaum, or Lebensbaum, a tree of Christ, light, or life; Württemberg had Christkindleinsbäume, Christ child trees.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography