KITE & KEY MEDIA: Where do America’s Christmas traditions come from? Germany. And ancient Rome. And Norse mythology. And The Netherlands (kinda). It’s a complicated story. The idea for Christmas trees came to the U.S. from Germany. The practice began in the Middle Ages, when paradise trees were decorated to celebrate the feast day of Adam and Eve on December 24. As for Santa Claus, there’s surprisingly little historical evidence that the character has his roots in the Dutch colonists of New York. Instead, the traditions of St. Nick date to the early 1800s, during a wave of nostalgia for New York’s Dutch heritage popularized by figures like Washington Irving. The 19th century was also when elves started getting associated with Christmas, a big departure from their previous incarnation as inter-dimensional creatures in Norse mythology. As for decking the halls with boughs of holly, that may be a tradition borrowed from the Druids and the Romans. The holiday’s association with spending time with one’s family is an American invention – that was designed to reduce Christmas’s association with drinking and violence.
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