With all the hoopla over Christmas trees now being referred to as Holiday Trees, one needs to be reminded that these decorations have no relation to the birth of Christ. Christmas trees originated in Germany, but they did not reach America until the late Victorian era. Christmas trees in America were a twentieth century innovation to the Christmas celebration. Neither the pilgrims, puritans nor the colonial Virginians ever celebrated the day of Christ’s birth by decorating a tree.

Jessie Ruth Sluder was but a toddler when her parents moved from Kansas to Oklahoma farmland that had been staked in the Cherokee Strip Run of 1893. She remembered the first Christmas tree she had seen when she was about six years old.

About the winter of 1896 was perhaps my first and most outstanding Christmas. The people of our community decided to have a program and tree at our sod schoolhouse. Whether it was the only one around, I don’t know, but people came for as many as ten miles or more. They loaded the families with plenty of quilts into wagons and came. And the schoolhouse was crowded. Where they got the tree, I don’t know, but it was a very large cedar, stood to the ceiling and filled one corner of the rostrum. To me, it is still the outstanding Christmas tree I remember of having seen. No lights, no store decoration or tinsel, but still it was well decorated.

The women must have popped and strung corn for three or four days to have so much. The corn was strung on sewing thread with a needle and the strings used as we use tinsel rope now. And it was good eating after being taken from the tree. Just get a whole string or break off a piece and eat the corn from it. No wasting by dropping a kernel now and then as from a handfull. And the women also put in a lot of time making sacks for the candy, nuts and perhaps an orange or apple. These sacks were made of colored mosquito netting or just plain white, filled and then hung on the tree. What need for other decoration? The tree was large enough to hold many presents and there were many, as everyone had to have something. Many handkerchiefs were in view. At that time, giving a handkerchief was a real gift. On one limb was the largest and prettiest doll I had ever seen. (”Early Yules” by Jesse Sluder Guffy)