The fragrance of pine and candle wax. The warm glow of a fire flickering on the hearth. The peaceful calm of moonlight sparkling across the crystals of a fresh snowfall. These are among the memorable images of Christmas past with the center of all being the tree — a brightly decorated Christmas tree gleaming radiantly with lights of the rainbow reflecting off globes of glass and streaks of tinsel. This iconic symbol of the season is celebrated with its own song — “O Tannenbaum.”
When I was in grade school at George W. Julian, IPS No. 57, the pupils were taught this song in both German and English. I imagine our singing “O Tannenbaum” in German was a bit of nostalgia for our teachers, many of whom as children were taught in the Indianapolis public schools when the German language was part of the elementary curriculum. Yes, “O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum” — “O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree….”
While Germans had a presence in Indiana since the Revolution, it is unknown when the Christmas tree made its first appearance in the Hoosier state. The 1848 wood cut scene, “Christmas Tree at Windsor Castle,” in the London Illustrated News showing Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their children gathered around a small evergreen re-appeared in December 1850 on the pages of Godey’s Lady Book, an influential American magazine. Coupled with this royal approval of bringing a tree into a home and decorating it for Christmas, the German immigration to the United States following the Revolution of 1848 gave impetus to this unique central European custom developing in Indiana.
It is likely following the founding of the Turngemeinde (Turner Society) in 1851 in Indianapolis that this early German club celebrated Christmas with a decorated tree. The Daily Indiana State Sentinel, recounting a visit on Christmas Day 1854 to the Institute for the Blind, describes a Christmas tree “its branches…weighed down with the rarest of fruit, from the bead-basket, and the doll babies, to the lace and ribbons, the ‘forget-me-nots,’ the books, and other souvenirs which will long be cherished by the happy recipients.” Affirming that the Christmas tree had become the center of all holiday events in the city churches, schools, and community festivals, Beechwood Nurseries along East Washington St. began to supply trees for celebrations in 1858.
Christmas trees came into greater use in the decades following the Civil War. While the decorated evergreen remained the focal point of community and social Christmas celebrations, it was also becoming a popular seasonal home decoration. Indianapolis florist Lange & Bock advertised “Christmas Trees-Garlands-Wreaths,” and Charles Mayer & Co. advertised “beautiful ornaments for Christmas trees.” Retailers also were placing Christmas trees in their store windows “to convince anyone [of the] many beautiful articles [inside]…suitable for Christmas gifts.”
In addition to cut Christmas trees, Christmas trees planted in boxes that could be transplanted in the yard and artificial Christmas trees were becoming available. President Benjamin Harrison took the Hoosier Christmas tree tradition with him when he had the first indoor Christmas tree installed in the White House in 1889. The tree, decorated with “many colored tapers and strings of popcorn, and gilt stars, and all sorts of things that are necessary to make a real genuine Christmas tree,” was put in the private parlor of the residence where the President and his family gathered around it on Christmas Day.
The use of lighted candles to illuminate Christmas trees was “the cause of most of the casualties of Christmas.” One Christmas tree nearly illuminated more than the tree when one of the tapers set a tree ablaze during the Christmas Eve program at the Irvington Methodist Church in 1900. The flaming evergreen was quickly dragged out a side exit and extinguished saving all except the tree and its decorations. By the end of the decade, a holiday party at the Propylaeum in December 1910 featured two Christmas trees “lighted with dozens of tiny colored electric lights.” Three years later, the municipal Christmas tree was decorated with 1,000 white electric lights and surmounted it with a large electric star. In the following holiday season electric Christmas tree lights — “colored glass globes, convenient, always ready to light the tree – and it will do away with any chance of fire” — were advertised for home use.
At the beginning of the Christmas season in 1913, it was suggested by the Cornelia Cole Fairbanks Chapter of the D.A.R. that Indianapolis have a municipal Christmas tree. Subsequently, a towering sixty-foot Norway spruce was placed in University Park, decorated and illuminated. This first municipal Christmas tree became the center of the city’s Christmas Eve celebration as a crowd of hundreds gathered around it to hear a chorus of carolers singing familiar Christmas songs. In 1918, following the Armistice that brought peace after four years of war, Indianapolis celebrated a “community Christmas.” Choral groups gathered around four large illuminated and decorated Christmas trees placed around the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to lead in a community sing on Christmas Eve.
In the ensuing years, a large decorated evergreen tree — a municipal Christmas tree — was occasionally placed in University Park for the Yuletide season, but the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, “in the very heart of Hoosierdom,” began to be lighted in the pre-war years with spotlights casting a “red glow” on the structure and “streamers of multi-colored bulbs” decorating the spire. A large Christmas tree was also part of the festive scene.
The first December of peace in 1945, after long years of world war, found the Indianapolis Christmas Committee coming together to provide a “Yule tableaux” in the transformation of the Monument “into a living symbol of ‘Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.” Among the traditional Christmas decorations and multi-colored lights, church choirs, school choirs, and community choirs provided daily choral programs in the days leading up to Christmas. Through the end of the 40s and into the 1950s, multitudes of Hoosiers gathered on the Circle each December to see the transformation of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument into a “Christmas jewel” with the throwing of an electrical switch. The 1962 holiday season, when the lights switched on, the city beheld the “World’s Tallest Christmas Tree” for the first time. The Monument was encircled with fifty-two steel cables stretching 242 feet in length and fitted with more than 6,000 colored lights giving off the glow of 36,000 candles. This unique Tannenbaum, our Christmas Tree, the Circle of Lights continues to offer the Season’s Blessings to All.
