What Was the First Christmas Ornament? A Short History
The first Christmas tree decorations were real food: apples, nuts and sugar pastries hung on evergreen trees in Germany. The first glass ornaments are credited to Lauscha, a glassmaking town in Thuringia, Germany, where glassblowers began making glass baubles shaped like fruit and nuts in the late 1840s. The earliest recorded order for glass “Christmas balls” there dates from 1848.
What were Christmas trees decorated with before ornaments?
Before glass baubles, trees were decorated with things people could eat or make at home. The Thuringia tourism board’s page on Lauscha’s Christmas baubles says trees were previously hung with fruit, nuts and sugar pastries. Many of today’s ornament shapes, from round red balls to glass fruit, are descendants of those edible decorations.
Who made the first glass Christmas ornament?
Lauscha had been a glassblowing town since the late 16th century. According to the Thuringia tourism board, a legend says that in 1847 a poor Lauscha glassblower, who could not afford apples and walnuts for his tree, blew glass ones instead. The first documented order is a glassblower’s order book from 1848 that lists six dozen “Weihnachtskugeln”, or Christmas balls, in different sizes.
Homes & Antiques names Hans Greiner, a descendant of the founder of Lauscha’s first glassworks, as the maker who began producing glass ornaments shaped like fruit and nuts in 1847. They were blown into molds and silvered on the inside, which gave them their shine. So the fair answer is: the first glass ornaments came from Lauscha in the late 1840s, and the 1847 story is partly legend.
How did glass ornaments reach America?
Through trade, and especially through F. W. Woolworth. Homes & Antiques reports that Lauscha was exporting ornaments to Britain by the 1870s, and that Woolworth began importing Lauscha glass ornaments to America in 1879, with the trade growing large by 1890 and lasting until the First World War. The Thuringia tourism board adds that Woolworth discovered the baubles in nearby Sonneberg and sold them in his American stores at the end of the 19th century. Our page on the Christmas pickle ornament tells one of the stories that grew up around those imported glass shapes.
Why are ornaments made of glass?
Originally because glass was what Lauscha’s craftsmen knew how to make, and because it was a cheaper and longer-lasting substitute for real fruit, according to the legend. Glass also catches candlelight and, later, electric lights, which is a large part of its charm. Today ornaments are made from many materials, including plastic, ceramic, acrylic, wood and fabric, and each has its own strengths. Our comparison of ornament materials and how breakable they are goes through them one by one.
Why are ornaments round?
The round shape most likely comes from the fruit that decorated the first trees. Early glass ornaments imitated apples and nuts, and a ball is also the easiest shape for a glassblower to make: blow into molten glass and it naturally forms a sphere. A round ornament reflects light in every direction and hangs evenly on a branch, which helped it become the classic shape.
Why do we put ornaments on Christmas trees?
Decorating an evergreen tree is a German custom that spread through Europe and America in the 19th century. Homes & Antiques notes that Queen Charlotte put up a German-style tree at Windsor in 1800, the first Christmas tree firmly dated in Britain, and that the Illustrated London News described the royal family’s tree in 1848. Hanging ornaments grew from the earlier custom of decorating the tree with food and candles. Today they also serve as a family record. Many families add one ornament each year, for a first Christmas, a new home or someone they miss, so the tree tells the family’s story.
Quick answers
- What was the first Christmas ornament? Edible decorations like apples and nuts; the first glass ones were made in Lauscha, Germany, in the late 1840s.
- When were glass ornaments invented? Legend says 1847; the first recorded order is from 1848.
- Who brought them to America? F. W. Woolworth imported them from the late 1870s.
- Why are ornaments round? They copied the fruit on early trees, and a sphere is the natural shape of blown glass.