Christmas is fast on its way and with it comes a series of traditions both culturally and those traditions that each family passes down through the generations. These family traditions could be anything from all popping down to choose your Real Christmas Trees Leicester through to each taking a stir and making a wish over the Christmas cake mixture.
Here are three of the more common Christmas traditions and the meanings behind them.
Christmas Trees
There are so many different varieties of trees that you can choose from each year. Not only can you make a decision between real or artificial, but you can choose the species of tree as well as colour and pre-decorated or not. The tradition of decorating a tree has been around for thousands and of years in the European countries. It was however, not until the 1840s that the trees first appeared here in the UK. Prince Albert was the first person to put a Christmas tree up in Windsor Castle in around 1841 and this trend soon started to sweep through the general population.
Christmas Cards
It may seem that the shops are awash with Christmas cards, special ones for those close loved ones and boxes and boxes of generic cards. Offices and schools will soon be adorned with these festive little pieces of card. The first Christmas card was in fact first created in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole and John Horsley who was the artist who created the image on the front of the card. They were created as a way of encouraging people to use the Public Records Office – what we now know as the Post Office. It only took a few short years before in the early 1900s people throughout Europe started to send Christmas cards to their friends and family annually.
Christmas Stockings
This tradition originates back with Saint Nicholas who was better known as the giver of gifts. The story goes that Saint Nicholas was delivering gifts when he came across a family of three daughters. The poor father was in no position to be able to afford a dowry for each of his daughters so in order to help the man out Saint Nicholas dropped three bags of gold down the chimney. These fell into stockings that were left next to the fire to dry and the tradition of hanging stockings over the fireplace began.