The history of decorating Christmas trees

TL;DR The history of decorating Christmas trees is a story that stretches across centuries, from winter greenery and edible ornaments to the first glass baubles blown in Lauscha in 1847. It moves through a clear timeline: 1419, 1510, 1610, 1800, 1840/1848, 1882, 1930, and right up to today. Along the way, Polish glassmaking became a craft worth knowing, and it is exactly that tradition that ExArte keeps alive with handmade, hand-painted glass ornaments.

The history of decorating Christmas trees: from winter greenery to glass

Ever wonder why we drag a tree into the living room every December and cover it in shiny things? The answer is older and stranger than most people expect. The history of decorating Christmas trees is not one single tradition that someone invented on a specific day. It is a layered story, built up over centuries, where old winter customs, religious meaning, and simple human love of beauty all got tangled together.

A Christmas tree, in the simplest terms, is an evergreen tree brought indoors and decorated to mark the winter season and the Christmas holiday. But how it got there, and what people hung on it, changed a lot along the way.

So let's walk through it together, step by step, from the very beginning.

Before the tree: evergreens and winter greenery

Long before anyone thought of putting a whole tree inside the house, people were already bringing greenery indoors. Evergreens stay green when everything else is bare, so they became a natural symbol of life in the middle of winter. That is the root of the whole custom.

In Slavic lands, there was a tradition called the podłaźniczka — a decorated tip of a fir or spruce hung from the ceiling, upside down, often adorned with apples, nuts, and paper ornaments. It is a lesser-known chapter, but it is basically the ancestor of the Christmas tree in this part of Europe. If you have ever wondered what people hung up before trees became the norm, this is your answer.

Why greenery? Because it was available, it was beautiful, and it quietly promised that spring would come back.

The first decorated trees (15th–16th century)

The earliest documented Christmas trees start showing up in the 1400s and 1500s, mostly in German and Livonian towns. Here are the dates that come up again and again:

• 1419, Freiburg — often cited as the first Christmas tree, though this claim is disputed.

• 1441, Tallinn — a tree set up by a brotherhood in the town hall.

• 1510, Riga — a tree decorated by the Blackheads, then burned.

• 1561, Upper Alsace — a law limiting how many trees households could cut.

• 1570, Bremen — a guild tree decorated with apples, nuts, and paper flowers.

A word of caution: the "first Christmas tree" is genuinely debated. Some researchers trace the famous Freiburg 1419 reference to a much later date, around 1625. So treat these early dates as the earliest documented mentions, not as a single proven starting point. Nobody can honestly say "the first Christmas tree was exactly here, on this day."

What people hung on the tree: the ornament timeline

This is the heart of the story. The decorations changed because people's needs changed. Early trees were decorated with things you could eat or make at home: apples, nuts, wafers, gingerbread, and paper flowers. Then glass arrived, and everything shifted.

Here is how the ornament timeline looks at a glance:

So why did glass replace food? A few simple reasons: food got eaten or spoiled, glass lasted for years, and a shiny bauble reflected candlelight in a way an apple never could. Once glassblowers figured out how to blow ornaments into moulds, they could make them in large numbers, and the price dropped.

Glass baubles: Lauscha and the 1847 breakthrough

The town of Lauscha in Thuringia, Germany, had glassblowing workshops as far back as the 16th century. But the real turning point came later. In 1847, a glassblower named Hans Greiner produced the first round, silvered glass bauble — a glass ball with a mirror-like silver coating inside.

It is worth keeping two things separate here:

• The 16th century is when Lauscha's glass workshops began.

• 1847 is when the round, silvered bauble was born.

From there, the ornaments spread fast. By the 1870s, Lauscha was exporting glass baubles to Britain. And around 1879–1880, the American retailer F. W. Woolworth began importing them to the United States, where they became an instant hit. That is how the glass bauble crossed the ocean.

Tinsel, lights and toppers

Tinsel is older than most people think. It was invented in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1610, and the original version was made from shredded silver. It shimmered, it caught the candlelight, and it became a staple of the decorated tree.

Then came the big shift: from candles to electricity. The first electric Christmas tree lights appeared in 1882, and over time they replaced the open flames that had always made indoor trees a little risky. That single change made decorating safer and far more practical.

And the topper? The eight-pointed star became a popular manufactured ornament from around the 1840s. It gave the tree a natural finishing point at the top, and it is still one of the most loved ways to crown a tree today.

How the tradition travelled: from German homes to the world

The Christmas tree did not stay in Germany for long. It travelled, mostly through royal households and the press.

• 1800 — Queen Charlotte is credited with bringing the decorated tree to Windsor in Britain.

• 1840 — Prince Albert set up spruces at the palace, giving the custom a royal spotlight.

• 1848 — an engraving in the Illustrated London News showed the royal family around a decorated tree, and the idea spread like wildfire.

From there, different regions made the tradition their own:

• Protestant Germany kept the tree fairly simple and focused on lights and a few ornaments.

• Bavaria and Austria leaned toward richer, more elaborate decorations.

• Scandinavia became known for animal figurines and natural motifs.

• The United States embraced personalisation, with names, dates, and keepsake ornaments.

• The UK and Ireland often go for a fuller, more maximalist look.

Same tradition, many different faces. That is part of what makes it so fun.

Polish glass ornaments: a craft worth knowing

Here is where the story gets personal for us. Poland has its own deep chapter in the history of glass ornaments, and it is one worth telling.

The first Polish glass baubles appeared in the late 19th century, around the 1870s. From there, the craft grew into something serious. In 1946, a glass manufactory was founded in Gniezno, and other workshops followed. Komozja was founded in 1945, and Vitbis in 1953. The Milicz factory became one of the largest, producing roughly a million ornaments a year, with around 90% of them exported.

How are these ornaments actually made? It is a slow, careful process:

• Glass is heated to around 700 °C and blown by hand.

• The inside is silvered using silver nitrate, which gives that mirror shine.

• Then comes the painting, done by hand in many separate stages.

That is why a handmade ornament feels different in your hand. It is not stamped out on a machine line. It is made by a person, one piece at a time.

This is exactly the world ExArte works in. ExArte is a family-run Polish curator of mouth-blown, hand-painted glass ornaments, based in Piaseczno. It is not a factory — it is a keeper of a collection, gathering pieces from Polish workshops and bringing them to homes that would otherwise never see them. Every era in this article has a matching piece in the ExArte range of handmade glass ornaments. For the botanical, mistletoe-and-holly chapter, there is the Ball 10 cm – Ornamental Mistletoe, hand-painted with mistletoe branches and golden scrollwork. For the 19th-century literary and folk chapter, there is the Nutcracker with a sabre 19 cm, a nod to the character made famous by Tchaikovsky's ballet. Same craft, same lineage, different stories.

Why handmade still matters today

For a while, the world drifted toward plastic. Cheap, light, and everywhere. But lately, there has been a clear turn back toward handmade work. People want ornaments with a story, not just a shine.

Glass helps here too. It is made from sand, soda ash, and limestone, and it can be recycled. A glass ornament is not disposable. It is the kind of thing you pack away carefully and bring out again next year, and the year after that. Many families end up with ornaments that carry decades of memories.

So how do you spot a genuinely handmade ornament? Here is a quick checklist:

• A pontil mark — a small spot where the glass was held during blowing.

• Slight asymmetry — handmade pieces are rarely perfectly identical.

• Visible brush strokes — a sign of hand-painting, not a printed decal.

• Weight and feel — real glass has a solid, cool presence in your hand.

• Small variations between pieces — no two are exactly the same.

That is also where a curated collection like ExArte helps. Instead of guessing, you can browse figurines, tree toppers, and creative sets that are all made the traditional way, and pick the ones that match your own tree and your own story.

FAQ

When was the first Christmas tree? The earliest documented trees appear in the 1400s and 1500s, with 1419 in Freiburg often cited, though that date is disputed.

Who invented glass baubles? The first round, silvered glass bauble was made by Hans Greiner in Lauscha, Germany, in 1847.

Why do we put a star on top? The eight-pointed star became a popular topper from around the 1840s, giving the tree a clear focal point at the top.

When did tinsel appear? Tinsel was invented in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1610, originally made from shredded silver.

Are Polish glass ornaments handmade? Yes, traditional Polish glass ornaments are mouth-blown, silvered with silver nitrate, and hand-painted in multiple stages.