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in many languages through songs, poems, plays, and paintings. Countless folk traditions, folktales, and folksongs have risen around Jesus’ birth abound. From talking farm animals who speak on Christmas Eve, to kings who travel from after to given gifts, these tales of giving have grasped the human imagination for generations.
 2.2.2 The Custom of Christmas
 Since the customs of Christmas celebration largely evolved in Northern Europe, many are associated with the Northern Hemisphere winter, whose motifs are prominent in Christmas decorations and in the Santa Claus myth. Nowadays local and regional Christmas traditions are still rich and varied, despite the widespread influence of American and British Christmas motifs through literature, television and other media.
Throughout history, Christmas greens have symbolized, and also it is an important sign of Christmas. Decorating a Christmas tree with lights and ornament, and the decoration of the interior of the home with garlands and evergreen foliage, are common traditions. In North and South America and to a lesser extent Europe, it is traditional to decorate the outside of houses with lights.
 The account of the Seed Tree (or “tree of all germs”) in Paradise, described in the Avesta, becomes the story of the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9) in the biblical Garden of Eden. With the introduction of Christianity in northern Europe the beliefs of sacred trees in Germanic mythology incorporate the concept of the Tree of Life. This association is explained by the English missionary Winfred (later St. Boniface) in northern Germany during the early 8th century. The fir tree commemorates the Holy Child. Winfred chanced upon a group of heathens at an oak tree. They were preparing to sacrifice a little prince to the god Thor. He stopped the sacrifice and cut down the “blood oak”. As the oak fell a young fir tree appeared--the tree of life representing Christ.
Decoration maybe was based on the Paradise Tree (apples--the serpent) from the popular mystery play about the “fall of man”, which was being performed by 1415. December 24th was Adam and Eve’s Day in the early Christian calendar. The play ends with foretelling Christ’s coming and incarnation--Christmas tie to Nativity? A wooden pyramid “of green brush wood”, with candles was present for a Moravian Christmas in Bethlehem, Pa., 1747. These two devices were probably the origin of the Christmas tree.
Estonians claim to have displayed evergreen Christmas trees since 1441. An evergreen tree was decorated on Christmas Eve in Riga, Latvia, 1510. There is no continuity of this event and later developments. Clearly Christmas vegetation, probably decorated, was being put in homes by this time. The first recorded tree referred to as a Christmas tree was at Strasburg, Alsace, in 1604. It was called a Paradise Tree (see above). Christmas trees are common throughout Germany, from Alsace-Lorraine area, by early 19th century. 　　

Christmas trees were in England by 1789, became common by 1829 and popular after Dickens’ Christmas Carol (1843). In 1848 Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert had a four foot high tree at Windsor Castle. It had candles, ornaments, ribbons and trinkets. A widely dispersed engraving of the tree pictures Albert, Victoria and their children. Modified copies of this engraving (removal of queen’s tiara and alteration of ornaments) appeared in U.S. illustrated magazines inc本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。