From public halls to town squares, dodgy candles to fairy lights, Norway spruces to Nordmann firs – our festive friend has travelled some journey.
IN streets and shopping centres across our region, Christmas tree lights are being switched on. In thousands of homes, trees are already ablaze, helping celebrations get into full swing.
It’s claimed that we owe lit trees to early 16th century German Protestant reformer Martin Luther.
Apparently, walking home one winter evening, he was so taken by stars twinkling in the evergreens that he wanted to capture the scene for his family.
Having put up a tree at home, he decorated its branches with lighted candles. The practice caught on throughout Germany, and all sorts of treasures were added, including fruit and gingerbread.
Queen Victoria and her German husband Prince Albert feature in a famous engraving of 1848, standing with their children around a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle.
During the 1880s, Germany was also responsible for the first artificial Christmas tree, which used goose feathers, dyed green and attached to wire branches. A decade later, decorations started to arrive in Ireland – yes, from Germany.
West Cork’s earliest trees were planted in public halls. In 1898, the Skibbereen Eagle described the Rev Mr and Mrs Tottenham entertaining 100 children for tea around a Christmas tree in Ballydehob in 1898, where Father Christmas and a magic lantern ‘vastly pleased’ them.
At Mardyke Hall in Skibbereen in 1903, a ‘fine Christmas tree’ and its ‘pretty gifts’ caused children ‘unbounded delight’.
Meanwhile, 200 people attended a ‘substantial repast’ of tea and cake in Dunmanway Town Hall, where ‘the tree bore a sparkling appearance … with many coloured lamps and candles, which showed off to perfection its fruit of toys, oranges, sweets, dolls’.
The town’s 1910 tree carried Chinese lanterns, ‘and the young folks were very much amused by the sparklers or crackers on the tree going off at intervals’.
The following year, 100 poor children who received free school breakfast were invited to Kinsale Courthouse for a ‘social’ around an enormous Christmas tree.
On Christmas Eve 1910, the Eagle suggested Edwardian ladies decorate their trees by scattering Epsom salts over their branches to make them ‘glisten with frost’. No need for gold and silver balls, or tinsel, there!
‘A very pretty and inexpensive trimming is brightly coloured narrow ribbon … draped from branch to branch,’ read the report.
As for lights, attach candles to the branch tips, but just ‘remember to have a wet cloth or sponge on the end of a stick, so that should anything take fire it can be put out at once’.
Most West Cork homes didn’t have Christmas trees for another 50 years.
Ger O’Mahony (68) from Killivarrig recalled that in the early 60s he used to see them in UK comics and Christmas cards. ‘But I never saw trees in houses.’
Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and children around a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in an image from 1848 and right, most Irish children in 1960 would only have seen a Christmas tree in comics such as the Beano.
Then, from the late 60s, they began to appear. ‘My wife remembers them on Coal Quay in Cork City – relatively small at first and getting bigger each year. They looked just like those we had seen in magazines.
They were very popular in shops from the 1970s. But we used to find our small fir tree in the woods, or we’d cut the tops off larger pine trees.’
Although flashing fairy lights were available from the mid-1960s, Ger and his wife never used lights on their tree. ‘Many homes only had one or two sockets … and no adaptors.’ Since Christmas trees could now be festooned with electric lights, they were moved outside. Some remembered loved ones, others helped ‘cheer the traveller on their way’.
The Rosscarbery tree of 1963 presented a ‘decorative picture’ to those approaching town, while the beast in Timoleague’s square in 1968 provided ‘an atmosphere of variety and colour’. In the early 1980s, Dunmanway boasted two trees.
Some specimens – notably Kinsale’s lobsterpot tree of 2022 – raised eyebrows. Others caused controversy – that on a Skibbereen traffic island (2001) was accused of obstructing the view of motorists, while a ‘futuristic’ Christmas tree in Bantry Square (2010) by day looked like a ‘massive bird cage’, according to some.
John Hosford from Week-End Garden Centre, Enniskeane, whose family has sold Christmas trees since the early 1980s, says these days, non-shed varieties dominate the market, replacing almost entirely the Norway Spruce, more likely to drop needles.
The most popular is the Abies nordmanniana (Nordmann fir). ‘People are also putting up trees much earlier now,’ he noted. John’s top tips: ‘Keep it outside in the cool until you’re ready to bring it indoors to decorate it … and supply water during the tree’s indoor life.’
Whichever type you choose, Christmas – from Carrigaline to Castletownbere – just wouldn’t be the same without a tree – ‘needles’ to say!
