Vermont-grown Christmas trees of all shapes and sizes are currently for sale by the Brattleboro Rotary Club in front of Brattleboro Bowl on Putney Road. Sale hours are Monday-Thursday 11-7; Friday 11-6 and Saturday-Sunday 10-6.
All trees are $40 with proceeds supporting the club’s annual local student scholarship awards.
The Club offers the following Christmas Tree factoids to use around your decorated tree.
- The use of evergreen trees to celebrate the winter season occurred before the birth of Christ.
- The first decorated Christmas tree was in Riga, Latvia in 1510.
- The first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531.
- The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr.
- In 1900, large stores started to erect big illuminated Christmas trees.
- Thomas Edison’s assistant, Edward Johnson, came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees in 1882.
- Christmas tree lights were first mass produced in 1890.
- Christmas tree decoration was banned by the government. Tinsel contained lead at one time; now it’s made of plastic.
- In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was the first President to place a Christmas tree in the White House.
- President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.
- Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons.
- The abbreviation Xmas isn’t irreligious. The letter X is a Greek abbreviation for Christ.
- The world’s tallest Xmas tree, at 221 feet high, was erected in a Washington shopping mall in 1950.
- James Pierpont’s 1857 song Jingle Bells was first called One Horse Open Sleigh and was written for Thanksgiving.
- Many parts of the Christmas tree can actually be eaten, with the needles being a good source of Vitamin C.
- The official Christmas tree tradition at Rockefeller Center began in 1933. Since 2004 the tree has been topped with a 550-pound Swarovski Crystal star. Since 2007, the tree has been lit with 30,000
energy-efficient LEDs, which are powered by solar panels.
The Brattleboro Rotary Club, founded in 1950, is an active community service club of over 80 members who engage in community and human service projects both locally and internationally.
For more information please visit the Brattleboro Rotary Club Website www.brattleboro-rotaryclub.org
