50 People That Absolutely Won The Internet With Their DIY Christmas Decor (New Pics)

Our Christmas decorations have their roots in a time long before the advent of Christianity. Plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter.

Just as we decorate our homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, many ancient communities hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many areas, it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and since many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak, they celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well again.

Evergreens reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.

Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it today around the 16th century, when devout Christians have been recorded bringing decorated trees into their homes.

Interestingly, for a long time, the United States found Christmas trees an oddity. Even as late as the 1840s, they were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

However, in 1846, the popular royals Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree.

Unlike her predecessors, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and because of it, what was done at court immediately became the new trend—not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society as well. Thus, the Christmas tree had arrived.

By the 1890s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree popularity was on the rise around the country. It was noted that Europeans used mostly small trees (about four feet (or 120 centimeters) in height), while Americans liked theirs to extend from floor to ceiling.