From the Vault: Holiday Inventions

is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And I was gonna say that it's almost Christmas time, but I don't know exactly what day this episode is going to be airing. We haven't fully worked that out yet. So it's sometime within a couple of weeks of Christmas, right, well Christmas Day, but certain it falls within the month of December or like the three month radius of surrounding December. So it's Christmas.

It's the holidays. Bells will be ringing, meaning doorbells with deliveries because that's uh, that's the kind of Christmas that's going on this year. Yep, yep. A supply chain straining holiday season. Yes, um so, yeah, you wanted to talk about some Christmas related inventions, and I gotta say we turned up some surprisingly weird and funny stuff on this subject.

I was pleasantly surprised with where this went. Yeah. Last year in the Invention feed Back when Invention was its own podcast, we focused on some popular toys, where they came from, how they were invented, things that went under the tree. This year, all of the inventions were discussing are things that go on the tree? Which is uh and and yeah these It turned out to be quite interesting. Do you have a tree up right now, Joe? We do. It is fake. It is made primarily of petroleum products.

So uh, what was once ancient organisms floating in the seas have settled down and become oil and now they are plastic and they're in my home and they make it festive. Oh nice, Well, we too have our tree up It is a a live tree, or at least one that was was alive at some point and it was cut free from the earth and uh so yeah, now it is in my living room and I run a hose in from outside to give it more water every day or so were you always a live tree person?

Or was that a transition. I've just always been a fake tree family my whole life. We were always a live tree family, and we would do this thing. I think this is something my family picked up in Canada and then continued to do, and that is for a for the the tree stand. Instead of having an actual

tree stand, we had a bucket of rocks. So you'd put the tree stump in the bucket and then you put big sizeable rocks around it, you know, to fill it up, but there's still space for water, and then we'd pour water are in and uh, I think we did that till one year the tree tipped over and rocks and water went everywhere, and then they decided, well, let's let's see about getting an art official tree, and then they made the switch. But uh, I've done both

here in my own household. Um. I mean, you know, it's it's a trade off, right because the there's a nice smell to the to the fresh cut tree. Um, But then you have to pick up the needles, you have to inevitably do a little song on it to make it function in your house. So I don't know I can go either way. I think conceptually, I'm very much a live tree person. I've just never in actuality been one. That's that's the power of habit and the

power of family tradition. Right, Like, if you were to present me these options afresh, as if you know I'd never celebrated Christmas before, I would definitely go live tree. But now I think I'm gonna be plastic to the grave. I used to like the idea of doing a small tree because if you do a small little tree, it's less less work, right, But now we have all of the is We've accumulated all of these these family heirloom decorations, so you know, we've got to put those on the trees.

You gotta have a large enough tree to hold them. That's a very good points as the ornaments that come as Christmas gifts that people give you when they don't know what else to give you for Christmas, as they accumulate over the seasons, they really do start weighing down those branches. Alright. So, like I said, everything that we're discussing this episode, all the inventions are things that go

on a Christmas tree. So we really need to lay the groundwork, especially for our first invention, Christmas tree lights, electric Christmas tree lights. Now we always discussed what came before. Well, I mean, obviously we have to talk about just the origin of the Christmas tree as much as we understand it. Um. Now, if a couple of different ways to consider this. You know, you can think about the the use of control fire itself for ceremonial purposes. Uh, this has a role in

every culture. But here we're talking more specifically about the use of illumination technology combined with the form of a tree or an actual tree. Now, I know I read a legendary account. Something tells me this this might not be necessarily true, but a legendary account involving Martin Luther and the origins of lighting up a Christmas tree. Um. So, so this story, I guess would post date the invention of the Christmas tree itself because it assumes there's already

a tree inside the house. But the story is that Martin Luther is out wandering one night, you know, the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. I'm sure he's uh, he's composing in his mind some extremely scatological screed against the pope, and then he's wandering and he sees trees, and he sees the stars, behind the trees twinkling and shining through the branches, and he's like, oh, how could I recreate

that at home? And the idea he comes up with is, well, let's put a bunch of candles in the branches of this evergreen. Yeah. It's a beautiful story, but as far as I can tell, it's just a story, just made up. Yeah, much like another story, another myth concerning St. Boniface thwarting a pagan ceremony and somehow turning it into a Christmas tree. Again. You know, it makes for a cool origin story, but

there's nothing to it now. There's certainly you get into the myth making about the origin of the Christmas tree. Like Another thing to keep in mind is that we have a lot of what you can think of as auxiliary traditions. Uh. For instance, in England, prior to the use of Christmas trees, there were fifteenth and sixteenth century traditions involving bringing holly and ivy in during the winter

and doing things with holly and ivy. They are dreadic traditions concerning mistletoe and we've explored those on the podcast. Before the winter may Pole tradition has also some similarities

according to historians. Yeah, the general ideas that you could find something that was green in the wintertime, some kind of evergreen branch, you know, if it was pine needles or or holly or something, and you'd bring that into the home around the winter solstice, and the green decoration would help distress the family from the barren misery that

is winter time. But Christmas tree traditions themselves where you'd actually cut down an evergreen tree and then bring it inside the house or at least put it somewhere near the house or in the barn or in the home. Uh. That appears to begin among German speaking people's maybe around the sixteenth century. That again, it's a little complicated because that seems to emerge from similar older traditions. But but the Christmas tree itself looks like it it comes around

the fifteen hundreds. And this was not the only Christmas decoration tradition among German speaking people's at the time. Another German classic was what came to be known as the Christmas pyramid. Though this name comes after Napoleon's adventures in Egypt. Uh, it's not strictly a pyramid like the ones at Giza, you've seen this before. It's sort of a tapering miniature tower with platforms populated by angels with trumpets and other

critters of that stripe. It's a little I arama, okay, I you know, I don't know that I've seen this. I think I've seen pyramid type constructions where they use points, setta plants and kind of arrange them like that. But I think one thing you could do when you're building your Christmas pyramid is put some evergreen branches on it, you know, kind of spruce it up and like, oh,

it's maybe it's not winter. Here's something green. Yeah. And then of course U slay all the servants who helped you erect it and placed them under the under the pyramid, right scoop the brains out of the angels through the nose. Yeah yeah. Oh man, you know, an an ancient Egyptian themed Christmas tree would actually be quite lovely. I'm not sure if you would put at the top, maybe a cyrus. Maybe you could put in the sun disc. I don't know.

There's there's so much you could do. Now I want to make one, except that I would not be permitted to do that. Now I was looking more into the the history here the tree, and you pointed to the sixteenth century origins in Germany, and certainly that seems to be when it was. We can really point to it and say, like, here is the Christmas tree tradition in action. But I was also reading from a book by Judith Flanders, Christmas Say Biography. She's a historian and writer with a specialty.

Her main especially, I think, is Victorian history, and she says that we can we can think of of many of these earlier traditions as again precursors to the Christmas Tree, and an association that had been forged between winter traditions and the tree we're already growing around this time, especially in Germany. The origins, she says, seemed to take us

back to the early fifteenth century. In Germany, there are records of a fourteen nineteen decorated tree in Freiburg decorated with apples, flower paste wafers, tinsel and gingerbread flower paste wafers. Oh boy, so Flanders points to documented traditions of paradise

plays performed at the time and performed around Christmas. They use that would have used an evergreen fur with apples tied to their branches in place of the Tree of Knowledge a k a. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which of course is important to Judeo

Christian traditions and tied to the world tree myths in general. Right, So in the Paradise play, this would be reproducing the the the myth of the Garden of Eden, where Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which Adam and Eve have been forbidden from from partaking of. They can eat of the Tree of life, and that you know, live forever, but they can't know what's right and wrong.

And and once they eat of the fruit, then they realize they're naked, and all kinds of bad stuff happens. God gets very angry. Yeah, it's a it's a whole scene, trust me. But at any rate that this would have been a tree standing in to represent that mythic tree, and the decorations would have included wool thread against straw apples, things like nuts and pretzels and yeah, pretzels, which makes sense, right, You can make things out of pretzels, make curious shapes

and all. It sounds good and also feels authentically German. This brings up a question I was talking about with Rachel recently, and something about this has me still a little bit steaming. Are you not supposed to eat a gingerbread house. I'm getting mixed signals about what the whole deal with the gingerbread house is, because if you're not supposed to eat it, why are you making it entirely out of edible foods? Uh? I guess that's a redundancy out of edible things. And if you are supposed to

eat it, why is it treated I don't know. I'm very confused. Well, I guess part of it is that it's not just you know, cookier cake, it's load bearing cookier cake. Right. Um, yeah, I was always told you were making a gingerbread house, but you can't eat it because the gingerbread is obviously just sitting out on the table and is not fit for consumption at this point. You know, when you turn the lights off at night, you go to bed and you nestle in, You nestle

in and get all cozy. The roaches come out. They crawl all over the gingerbread house, so they eat little bits off of it, and then they scurry away in the morning. So if you go and take a bite, just know who you're eating after exactly. Yeah, that's that's all a good reason not to trust it, unless I guess you're very controlling with your gingerbread house. It goes into the refrigerator when you're not using it. I mean, I could see that as working, and that could be fun.

But otherwise, you don't eat the house. You eat the men. You eat the gingerbread men. Voiced by Gary Busey. Yeah, alright, So this tree is becomes popular, In fact, it becomes so popular it outlasts the popularity of these paradise plays, and it becomes this holiday tradition. It is the it is the Christmas tree. It is the the vi Knox bomb.

So Flanders right, So the oldest Christmas tree market was apparently in Strassburg, just over the current German border in France in the seventeenth century, and Flanders points to the first decorated indoor Christmas tree as being is being tied to sixteen o five. Again, the decorations seemed to include things like apples and sweets, and they became quite popular in the straws Burg region with Actually there were fifteenth century laws put in place at one point to limit

the number of trees per household. Oh, this is not the last place we're going to encounter laws regulating Christmas trees. Yeah, I mean people, you know, they get upset about the War on Christmas, but wars must be waged against Christmas to keep it from getting out of control, because it will.

This is a centuries long tradition. Yeah. Now, speaking of of the traditions though, uh, you know, we we often especially here in the United States, uh, and and certainly in England, you think of it as being you know, firmly rooted in English speaking people's right, But the tradition didn't actually travel from Germany to England un till the

final quarter of the eighteenth century. Flanders points to the Gurton novel The Sorrows of Young Worther from seventeen seventy four, which was translated into English and includes a description of a tree not only with organic decorations, but with lights. So I had to I had to look it up, and you can find this text in full on the internet.

In but it here's the juicy part. Quote. He began talking of the delight of the children and of that age when the sudden appearance of the Christmas tree decorated with fruits and sweetmeats and lighted up with wax candles causes such transports of joy. The tree lighted up with wax candles is going to cause such transports of something. Yes, So another big thing that was involved in the transfer

of the Christmas tree tradition to England. In seventeen nine, the German wife of George the third suggested they erect quote an illuminated tree according to the German fashion, and and so you see it making the leap over into England. Now, as for the Christmas tree in North America, this is interesting. Flanders writes that it may have been here in North

America as soon as seventeen eighty six. Quote in North Carolina that year a member of the Morovian Brethren accused an apprentice of cutting down a small pine tree Christmas Eve, the day on which trees were customarily erected in Germany. Interesting. And there's also evidence of one in Georgia in eighteen o five. So this is this is interesting. We often think of of of things sort of you know, establishing themselves in England and then becoming a thing here in

the United States. Uh, you know, but of course there were people from from various European countries coming into North America, so it ultimately makes perfect sense that the Christmas tree would arrive here around the same time or even a little earlier. Well. Yeah, so, based on what I've reading, it seems like Christmas trees really started making their way to the United States, being brought with German immigrants, not not so much coming directly from England. The few people

in England were trying to pick it up. Um, it looks like the German immigrants would bring them in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they weren't taken up as readily among the general population as you might imagine, And there was basically a history of religious discrimination against Christmas

trees and other types of Christmas celebrations. After all, many of the early settlers of eastern the eastern North American colonies were English Puritans, who, most of the time, we're not fans of the sort of you know, beastie old pagan implications of a hallowed tree. You know, they were thinking, like, if you're gonna put a tree up in your house, why not just celebrate Christmas by having a decapitation contest green Night. Uh So, and a few examples of this.

William Bradford, you know, the King of the Puritans, the pilgrim governor of the Plymouth Colony. Uh. He was famous slash infamous, depending on your point of view. Apparently in one instance, Bradford just went ballistic and chewed out a bunch of people in the Plymouth Colony for trying to take the day off on Christmas. So you know, Bob Cratchit's out in the street hanging out on Christmas morning,

and Bradford sees him and just his eyes glow red. Uh. And so he's writing incredulously that instead of working, he found people on Christmas Day, quote in the street at play openly, some pitching the bar and some at stool ball and such like sports. And he regarded these celebrations of Christmas as some kind of quote, pagan mockery of God and the spirit of Jesus. So I think Bradford's idea of Christmas is you go to work and then

maybe you go to church. But you you you do not decorate, you do not play, you do not take the day off, you do not sing. That that is all satanic mischief. Yeah, he really sounds like the grand here. Yeah, totally. And there were some other examples that I found cited in a in a history dot com article I was reading called the History of Christmas Tree. So one of them was about Oliver Cromwell, not in the colonies but back in England, English Puritan leader, one of the victors

of the English Civil War and becoming Lord Protector. He he did not like what he called the heathen traditions of things like Christmas carols, or decoration of trees or you know, running around acting Mary that that was all kind of desecration of what he called the sacred event of Christmas. Um And this article also says quote in sixteen fifty nine, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December twenty five other than

a church service a penal offense. People were fined for hanging decorations. The Stern Solemnity continued until the nineteenth century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermine the

Puritan legacy. Oh man, this this is rich again, especially when you look at some of the like legitimate angst that emerges around you know, so called wars on Christmas and so today, Oh well, it's this is funny because while I was reading about this, looking at for these historical sources, I also just happened to stumble across like fundamentalist Christian blogs called things like Christmas Tree Truth and

stuff like that. They're still railing against Christmas trees as a as a trap door into some kind of covert satanic mass. It was, Yeah, that that's a whole corner of the Internet that is worth exploring. Yeah, Christmas trees are just a gateway to find joy and other satanic concepts. Yeah. But so by the mid to late eighteen hundreds, there there had been a real transition. By the late eighteen hundreds, Christmas trees started becoming popular in homes throughout the United States,

not just among German immigrants and their descendants. Christmas became a federally recognized national holiday in eighteen seventy I think

that was signed into law by Grant. And so, of course, as Christmas and Christmas trees became more mainstream, and you know, you're not necessarily part of an immigrant community who has a centuries long tradition of how exactly to festoon the branches you know, going back to your grandparents and all that, the question is going to become, how do you decorate

this thing? Well, you know, we're talking about Christmas tree lights, so the immediate predecessor to electric Christmas tree lights, it's of course going to be candles accentuated. This is interesting. I hadn't really thought about this, but accentuated by special

glass beads that were strung around the tree. Uh Flanders mentioned this, pointing out that to check glassblowers specialized in these not only were they beautiful, but there were there were something they were actually something on the tree that would not burn if things got out of control. Because of course, fire is a big risk when you're talking about decorating a tree with little candles, and it's it's actually,

you know, I knew this innately, like that's dangerous. That sounds like an out of control fire waiting to happen, But I hadn't really thought about all the various ways in which it is dangerous. Uh Flanders points out that that, first of all, with candle lights and hearth fires in general, fire was just a much greater daily risk back then.

But then you had these little candles wired tied to individual tree branches, which again in and of itself dangerous, But then as the candles melt, their weight alters and uh and so so that's going to alter the tilt of the branch that they're fixed to. Um, and that's you know, potentially move moving that little ball of fire around and putting it in contact with other branches and decorations and things. On top of that, wax is dripping down from these candles onto lower branches, and uh and

and uh in increasing their weight as well. So the risks, you know, go way beyond merely you know, a situation of candles balanced in a dried out tree, it becomes a moving system to contend with with with branches with one candle slowly moving up branches beneath, slowly dipping down with accumulating wax. Um. It's frightening, yeah, so Flanders writes quote. A series of innovations and contrivances designed to hold each candle in place with greater stability appeared over the years,

but a litt tree was never a safe tree. Many households lit their candles only once on Christmas Eve, prudently keeping the hand water and a stick with a sponge on the end of it um, which sounds great, like that that should be like a Christmas character, that should be like have its own decoration like the the sponge stick guy for putting out the tree fire calls to mind weird associations with the crucifixion scene in the Sponge Yeah. Alright,

so obviously again this is terribly dangerous situation. But it is the immediate predecessor to the electric Christmas tree lights, So this we can basically look back to the late eighteen hundreds on this one. In eighty two, the Edison Illuminating Company built the world's first electrical power station, and four months later they lit up a Christmas tree. It consisted of eighty red, white, and blue bulbs and was installed in the home of Edward H. John, an inventor

and Edison's business partner. But at this point electricity was simply not established enough for regular folks to get in on the action. This was a special tree, so it was only for special events and places such as an electric tree erected in the children's ward of the New York City Hospital or in the White House put up an electric tree. This would have been Grover Cleveland's White House hundreds of multicolored electric bulbs. According to the Library

of Congress. Some historians credit this tree was spurring the acceptance of indoor Christmas tree lights. But still you had to be either rich or an electricity nut, or I guess ideally both to have this sort of lighting set up at that time. According to the Library of Congress, a light uh to light an average Christmas tree with electric lights before nineteen o three would have cost something

like two thousand dollars in today's dollars. But but then at the turn of the century, General Electric buys out at A and and in nineteen o three they begin offering pre assembled kits of Christmas lights. Okay, sorry, I'm trying to imagine. So one of the things that pre dated electric lighting indoors and homes was you would have gas supplied lamps, right, so you'd actually kind of like

the wiring in today's home. You'd run gas pipes up through the walls and they'd have a little output where you could attach a lamp and that they would be powered indoors. Could you have a gas powered Christmas tree? So like the gas pipe runs up the trunk and then it goes out through some of the branches, they're just pipes around through them, and then they're just lamps all up and down. I like this idea of an unholy gas punk Christmas tree. Um I did not. She

does not mention it as being a reality. But man, there's gotta be some wacky and inventor who who tried it and exploded. If not, I really just doubt the ambition of inventors in the eighteen eighties. Um So, anyway, they put out this kit and Fleming quotes the brochure that comes with it. It says, quote, miniature incandescent lamps have perfectly adapted to Christmas tree lighting. The element of

danger I have a present with candles. It's entirely removed, as well as the inconvenience of grease, smoke and dirt. The lamps are all lighted at once by turning of a switch, will burn as long as desired without attention, and can be readily extinguished. No stick with a sponge required. That sounds far preferable. Flanders details This is a string

of twenty eight one candle power miniature Edison lamps. It costs twelve dollars and I believe that breaks down to something like three fifty dollars in today's money, which, to be clear, is is the sort of some people are still paying and well beyond that for their various holiday decorations.

When you were growing up, was there anybody in the town where you lived who was like the house that everybody in town knew about it would just go bonkers at Christmas and put up what looks like a million dollars worth of Christmas decorations in the yard and everybody dry by at night. Yeah. Yeah, there were several of those grizzwoll households around you would have you would drive

out to see them. They were destinations. Of course. Now we have so many inflatable decorations, which are cool, but I feel like that takes takes away some It doesn't take anything away from the decorations, obviously, but uh, there are all these other exciting ways to decorate a house for the holidays now that don't necessarily involve lights. But at the time, even in nineteen o three, it sounds

like you had some pretty cool options. Flaming points, uh to some Austrian produced strings of lights quote with bulbs shaped like fruit flowers and animals or snowmen or Santa's And the cool thing about these these were apparently battery powered and could be used in houses that didn't have electricity, which is which is again an interesting innovation because again nineteen o three, Yeah, and by the start of War War one, around nineteen fourteen, prices dropped to the affordable

range of a dollar seventy five, So it just became you can just see the situation. More and more houses are getting electricity, more and more households are cool with the idea of having electricity in in the home on the Christmas tree. I also understand that there was an insurance boost to having electric lights in your tree as opposed to candles, and then it just becomes more and more affordable, so more and more people buy into this.

According to the Library of Congress, American Albert Sedaka also

helped popularize tree lights. His family owned a novelty lighting store, so he was well positioned to cash in on this as a teenager in nineteen seventeen, he reportedly realized the demand and in nineteen twenty uh Albert and his brothers organized the National Outfit Manufacturers Association, or NOMA, which became the Noma Electric Company, and they ended up cornering the Christmas light market until the nineteen sixties, and NOMA was

responsible for a number of key innovations during their reign of Christmas terror, uh, including bubble lights. Do you remember bubble lights, Joe? I don't know what that is now, you know? Okay? I believe I had an aunt or two even that still had these on their trees when I was a kid. Uh. These were a nine innovation,

these were Uh. These consisted of liquid feel filled vials of toxic methylene chloride, and methylene chloride has a very low boiling point, so the heat of an electric bulb is enough to make it bubble, which looks cool on a Christmas tree. But again, toxic vials of bubbling liquid. Methylene chloride is also known as di chloro methane and it I think it is used as a paint thinner or like a paint stripper. Yeah. So um, I'm I'm

not jealous that I don't have these in my house. Um. And I'm not sure there might be some more acceptable form of bubble lights out there today, But I would love to hear from anyone out there who has memories of bubble lights uh or has some sort of updated version of the technology now or just anybody who has has memories of older models of Christmas tree lighting, because of course nowadays it's all pretty much l ed. Uh.

They system seems to be pretty much refined, The technology seems to be pretty stable, with just varying degrees of like smart technology involved in how they function. Like I think you can nowadays you can get an artificial tree with lighting still you know, already installed on it, and you can just you can decide like the frequency of the twinkle. You can decide like what the the colors are gonna be, just you know, on the fly. Oh,

sorry to whip us back. I think I just remember another use of dichlora methane, which I think it's the liquid that's in the dippy bird. Oh oh oh yeah, the the dippy bird, the the water drinking a bird automaton. Yeah, well there you go. That makes sense. Well, anyway, I'm gonna order some dangerous vintage bubble lights. I'm sure you can get the money. Oh, be careful, please be careful out there. Um. You know, I'd also love to hear

from anybody who still decorates at all with candles. Um. I imagine some people still do this, at least for that one lighting, But I just don't know. I don't think I'm brave enough to try it, even if I did have a sponge on a stick. Than okay, so put down your sponge on the stick, because I want you to picture another element of a classic Christmas tree picture, like the vintage nineteen fifties American Christmas tree, the kind of like you'd see in a Christmas story and that

kind of thing. But what do you see when you picture that in your mind? Maybe these multicolored electric lights, maybe big old ball shaped ornaments, kind of making the branches all drooped down under their weight. And then there's that other stuff, stuff that makes it look like the tree is dripping shiny metallic gack like a cassette tape has barfed silver pasta all over the festive branches. Yes, and and over the floor and um and just over

the house in general. Uh. You're talking, of course, about about Tinsel or I think when I was growing up we called him icicle Us for some reason. But Tinsel, Yes. So I've got to start off by saying, I don't know how many people still actually use this stuff, but I do know it still exists, you can buy it. I looked it up, but I'm mainly associated with Christmas trees. You would see an old polaroids from boomer childhood's. Yeah,

we we definitely used it. I was talking about tinsel with my wife last night and in both of our households growing up. Yeah, we just tinseled the hell out of those trees, like it looked like somebody had and just she lacked them with with with shiny metal drippings. So what is tinsel and where did it come from and where did it go? Well, so remember that the tradition of the Christmas tree, it ties into even older traditions, but it goes back at least as far as the

sixteenth century in Germany. Um So, so what came before tinsel in this context apparently literal icicles, because one thing I've read is that a common understanding of the purpose of tinsel is to resemble ice sickles hanging from the branches of an evergreen tree and glimmering in the sun. Now, if the tree is inside your house, it will not do to have icicles hanging from it, unless you have a really really cold house or you don't mind having

a really wet floor after they melt. So this is the next best thing, right, shiny glittering filaments that reflect the firelight and make your tree twinkle with Christmas cheer. Absolutely, and it's kind of an upgrading of those check beads that we talked about earlier, right, right, those were glass beads, right, Uh, so these are originally going to be very metal. I was reading, um, not metal like metal music they've made

of metal. I was reading a Mental Floss article about this by Michelle deb Chack about the history of of tins along Christmas trees, and she puts out a few interesting facts, one of which is that today tinsel is very cheap, you know, I looked it up. You can get it from Target for three dollars for a packet or something. But it was once absolutely a luxury item,

much like Christmas lights themselves. In seventeenth century Germany, there are records of trees being decorated with pressed strips made from real silver. And remember, you know, one of the classic appeals of silver and gold is the way they could shine beautifully. They'd reflect the light in a way that was pretty. And this was before the invention of

cheaper metal and plastic foils. So I was looking for more on the history here of about tinsel, and I found an interesting book by Bernd Brunner called Inventing the Christmas Tree, published by Yale University Press in and Brunner has some interesting things to point out here. Brunner says that quote tinsel was probably inspired by the so called

Leonie drata, which he says was introduced by Huguenots. From Leon, I think Leonisha drata means Leonese wire, and this would be quote silver or gold plated copper wire that was originally a byproduct of metal work. It is reminiscent of the silver thread that was woven into church estimates in the Middle Ages for a long time. Tinsel, also called silver plated sauerkraut in colloquial German, was cut from tinfoil. It is reminiscent of a thin icicle, but it could

just as well bring forth summary associations. And then he quotes a German writer who's a like a German realist author named Theodore Storm in a passage from eighteen eighty four where he's describing some stuff going on around Christmas. He says, quote on the Sunday before Christmas, my friend Peterson brought a sack filled with a marvelous silver thread. The tree wrapped in this fine silver thread looked like

a flying summer. But Brunner also notes that a variation on the silver tinsel was known as angels hair, fairies hair, or Baby Jesus's hair, and he says this was also a type of fine metal thread. Ah, now that's that's Internet. First of all, I mean, I just I'm picturing Jesus, adult Jesus with like a full head and beard of like straight up silver metal hair. But it also reminds me um. I remember talking to some of them, the Czech Republican They're talking about the tradition of the baby

Jesus lowering gifts down. I think kind of like a golden or metallic string. So I wonder if that's connected to this tradition, like Jesus with a fishing pole like the man on the moon kind of, I guess I'm down Baby Jesus from on high using like the silver corn really like a space elevator. That's very good. But so to come back to this the silver tinsil, So there were a lot of problems with genuine silver tinseil. One of the obvious ones I mentioned already is how

expensive it would have been. But also deb Check points out another thing, which is that silver tarnishes very quickly, so if you put it up on the Christmas tree, it might tarnish before Christmas actually came around. Okay, So but then again, if you're if you're putting up your tree on the like the traditional German Christmas Eve erection night, then it makes sense. I mean, they don't call it erection night obviously, but I mean that is the night

that you erect the Christmas tree. Okay, Yeah, maybe I'm not sure when exactly the tinsel would go up in in what context. But but you know, there were problems with it maintaining it's it's sheen for as long as you would want it to, especially since it's expensive stuff. So I mean, this might be problems with trying to use it year after year. If it was nade of actual silver, you would probably want to do that, right.

But in the early nineteen hundreds of manufacturers in the United States were making tinsel out of cheaper and more durable shiny metals like aluminum and copper, but there were still some problems with the new models because aluminum paper based tinsel was highly flammable. Again, this is going to cause problems when you want to light up your tree, right.

But then also during World War One, copper was in high demand for wartime production, and so that made it a poor choice for you know, for of qlidies like holiday decorations. So so what could come in to save the day? What other medals could come in to be your cuddle friend for Christmas time? Oh? I don't know, um, I know, you know where I'm going with this. Not lead, yep, lead?

Uh So, to read from teb Jack's article here, quote lead revive tinsel from obscurity, and soon it was embraced as a standard Christmas component along with ornaments and electric lights. It became so popular in the nineteen fifties and sixties that tinsel is often thought of as a mid century fad rather than a tradition that's been around as long

as Christmas trees themselves. With so many synthetic decorations becoming available around Christmas time, tinsel made from metal was considered one of the safer items to have in the home. A nineteen fifty nine newspaper article on holiday safety reads quote tinsel was fairly safe because even if the kiddies decided to swallow it, it will not cause poisoning. Uh. Folks, you you probably should not use tinsel based on lead at all, and you definitely should not let the kiddies

decide to swallow it. Um. And this became quite clear, obviously by the end of the sixties. I mean, starting in the mid sixties you had great scientists like Claire C. Patterson, Uh, you know, the Lord of Lead, who we've talked about before, talking about the the dangers of lead in the environment and dangers of lead being incorporated into the body. By the early seventies, the message was really out and there was, you know, widespread backlash against the total infiltration of lead

into every corner of our existence. I mean, this is the era when you get like the banning of leaded gasoline and things like that. Um. And of course, of course, this eventually also lead to the discontinuation of lead in many consumer goods, including tenseil. So if you buy tenseil today, it's probably gonna be made out of milar or polyvinyl chloride with the shiny finish. Uh. You know, you're gonna

get probably some kind of plastic product. But despite the fact that you can still buy it, I have noticed I don't really see it very much anymore. I mean, obviously somebody still using it because you can still get it. But like my question is what happened to tinsel? I wonder if modern versions of it just have too many associations with like the post war plastic boom kind of energy,

if it just seems too synthetic. Because Brunner writes of a countervailing force against tinsel in all of its forms in In one paragraph in his book, he says, quote at the end of the eighteen seventies, there is documentation from Corinthian gael Valley in southern Austria, that a thick spruce, free of all decoration, was placed in the corner of a farmstead as a sign of silent joy. On frosty

cold winter mornings. The tree, now covered with little icicles and illuminated by the sun's rays, shimmered like a Christmas tree covered in lights, without any tensil or fairi's hair. The wild beauty of the tree suffice and this kind of brings us back to what we were talking about at the beginning, like the fake tree versus the real tree.

I mean, I feel that real tree drive, even though habits have prevented me from ever going there, and the real tree drive, I think feeds into a maybe maybe a more total rejection of things that remind you of synthetic industrial products when you're decorating for Christmas. Yeah, I do admire those really organic trees you see sometimes where they're they're using my strong popcorn around it, and and yeah, maybe getting back to the use of apples and and

so forth. Uh, you know it's yeah, I do like that the idea that you could basically just eat the whole tree after after Christmas, just eat it up or just I guess it's you know, completely compostable to some degree as well, that let the fungus have it. Uh. But there's one more passage I want to read before

we move on. This doesn't really have much to do with tensil, but I was reading parts of this book, Inventing the Christmas Tree by Burned Burner, and um I came across one section where I met the hannibal lecter of Christmas, just the most astonishingly anal retentive Christmas fanatic in history. Do you mind if I read this just because I thought it was let's let's do it, let's

lean into the holidays. Yeah, okay, okay, So this is Brunner, This is Bruner himself writing this introduction to the passage. Bruner says some specialists transformed decoration of the Christmas tree into an exceptional skill. Among them was the German Hugo Elm, who, in his eight seventy eight Golden Christmas Book made a plea for quote a tasteful separation of the numerous decorations on the tree. In order to avoid a bland hodgepodge.

He suggested the following steps, precisely designed for the anatomy of the tree and the load capacity of its branches, And here the quote begins. Decorations should begin with the heaviest objects, which are best placed near the trunk and in the middle of a branch. Next one should place the nuts. Place silver and gold nuts, alternating about three to four pieces on the longer and two to three on the shorter branches, and on the top smallest branches

only one each. The golden and silver pine cones, in contrast, should be placed farther forward. In the second third of the branch, as calculated from the trunk outward. Marzipan and sweets are best placed in between two nuts. Shiny glass balls, fruits and the like are to be placed preferably on the upper branches in order to enjoy the effect of

their refracting rays of light. Metal coils and tinsel are spread out at the tips of the secondary branches, for these are thinner and are more likely to sway than the thicker main branches, and small baskets and nets made

of paper are placed on secondary branches. The individual stars should be distributed evenly, while the strings of alternating nuts, draw stars, paper and similar are to be wound around the branches, and distributed paper bags should always be put on the tips of the branches, ideally beneath the lights.

At the top of the tree, one customarily puts a large star made of cardboard covered with golden paper, in which one glues either a self made or bought Christmas angel, a thick tone with golden fringe, and an old Gothic script displaying the Sublime Christmas saying glory to God in the high also looks magnificent. Once the lights have been put on the tree. The tops of the branches can be covered with loosely pulled cotton and these then affixed

with silver thread. This is my design. Okay, so here's my idea. Actually, in the tradition of Batman versus Superman, Freddie versus Jason, Godzilla versus King Kong, we've got to have a big movie Christmas extravaganza. Hugo Elm versus William Bradford, the Man who Hated Chrismus versus the Man who will kill you if you put the nuts and the stars in the wrong order. Oh wow, wow, Yeah, I love that reading. It's just so um pedantic, so so tyrannical.

Concerning the decoration of the Christmas tree. Right there at the end though, he mentioned the star, the angel, the tree topper. Joe, what's what's your treetopper? Oh? Um, you know, I don't know the answer. I could go check right now. Let me let me go check some waiting music in the meantime. All right, I may have caught him in alive. There may be no Christmas tree and he's not coming back. Oh it's anticlimactic. The star, Yeah, the star and the

angel are are typical. You do see some other quirky Christmas tree toppers. I I have some family members to use a tartists at the top of their tree. They can. They consider that the pinnacle um. But of course one of the big ones is is either the star or the Angel. So for our final section in this episode, I wanted to talk about the angelic tree topper. So

remember when we discussed the Victorian Christmas tree. Apparently was during this time that the angel really became popular as a Christmas tree topper, and it remains a popular choice to this day. Though for the most part, these are generally the most boring sort of angelic depictions you could ask for, never the fearsome or surreal angels that one often finds another treatments and art and artistry, and even in um sacred literature. Now, these are generally like little

dress up dolls with wings in a halo. This is not the terrifying messenger who carves the seven Pas into Dante's forehead, right right, which again I say missed opportunity there. I'd love to hear from anyone who has a more terrifying angel at the top of their tree. I guess you could put. I know they have ornaments of the what what are they? The weeping angels from doctor who? So maybe some uh, some doctor who fans out there

have have those at the top. Oh, that's not a bad idea, but uh, to discuss what came before this this invention, basically reasoning, this is an excuse to talk about angels and Christmas tree angels. Basically, the angel at the top of the Christmas tree is there because the Angel Gabriel factors into the Christmas story. Gabriel is the Angel of annunciation, the messenger of the Almighty God that informs Mary that she is pregnant with the Son of God.

And just to give you a taste of the the original Bible literature here, this is from the King James version uh Luke one six three, and in the sixth month, the Angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin in espouse, to a man whose name was Joseph of the House of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. I believe it's also in the Gospel of Luke that the Angel later at the birth of Jesus appears to the shepherds and tells

them the good news that I'm unto them. My savior is born right, and I think that that if I'm not mistaken. That angel is not named, but it's often assumed that it might be the same angel, or I guess maybe angels working for Gabriel. Uh, it's all a little vague, but but Gabriel is often referred to as the Harold a k A Harald Angel. You may have heard of him. He's been heart the Herald Angel sings um.

But Gabriel is also sometimes referred to as the Angel of Death or though the the one who will blow the final trumpet before the end of time. He's also sometimes described as a deathbad angel who eases people into the next life. Yeah, the actual characteristics and individual identities of the angels and their hierarchies are not really explored in what's usually considered canonical biblical literature, but a lot of sort of apocryphal and you know, extra canonical works.

Now here's a fun fact. According to Carol Rose, who often refer to for various mythical and uh, you know, fanciful creatures, Rose points out that the word angel derives from the Greek anglos and would have been pronounced with a hard G up until the end of the thirteenth century, in line with Old English and Teutonic traditions, but then

the French influence softens it. That's interesting now when you see the word angel appearing in like the Bible, that comes from word that originally just means messenger, so like the angels are the messengers of the divine realm. Yeah, yeah, Sometimes that message takes the form of announcing a birth. Sometimes it's more than the destruction of an entire city,

that sort of thing. But I have to say, growing up in Christianity, I often gravitated towards the weirdness of angels because they were supernatural outsiders, demi god like travelers, and there's of course a ton of interesting material built up around them, from their depicture and throughout hard history, to their place in occult magic, to their treatment in modern popular culture, and also in the spiritual warfare fundamentalist theology that was popular back in the ninety nineties, and

I guess it's probably still popular in some circles. But you know, the angels were just this deeply weird concept that was just an accepted aspect of religious reality. Well, yeah, there is a funny irony and like the insistence of the idea of monotheism, and yet there are these heavenly beings called angels, and you might say, well, but they're

heavenly beings but not gods. And then you just get into sort of like hair splitting over what the meaning of God is because a lot of the things that are called gods and what are openly acknowledged as polytheistic religions actually in many ways are similar to what people

believe about angels. And say Christianity, Yeah, because if you're if you were like like I was, sometimes, if you're board in church and you pick up the Bible and you're like, well, I'm gonna read some angel stories, uh, You're to be a little disappointed because there's there's actually not much angelic action in the Bible, just a handful of occurrences, and there's nothing to explain why they exist.

There's no origin story or anything for the angels. Though, if you want to get into stuff outside the biblical canon about where the angels come from and all that, you get some into some wild and awesome territory. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of great fan fiction that it emerged throughout history about this reveal, like we

gotta explain these guys where they come from? Um so, so I was looking into this a little bit for for this episode, and I read the archangel Gabriel in History and Tradition by Roxana Eleana yavashi Uh and you've actually points out that the reason that angels are basically taken for granted both in Judaic and Christian traditions is that you did not need to explain them. They are already part of our supernatural understanding of everyday reality in

the world. The author points out that Hebrew ideas of angels were influenced by Babylonian angelology and and also by Zoroastrianism. So the idea, as they explain it is that while angelic beings, demi gods and you know, various intermediaries that serve primarily as messengers are sometimes agents of another sort. They certainly factor into various religious systems, including the polytheism of ancient Egypt. You know they're there, But but while

they are, they factor into polytheistic um pantheons. They are a necessity, they write for monotheistic religions, as the monotheistic God is ultimately faceless, or at least does not reveal its face to humans. So for a god of God's to do human like things, it has to send a human like messenger. Oh yeah, that's kind of interesting. Now, I would say that the idea of the monotheistic God is a like faceless, you know, disembodied kind of spirit that has no form of its own. Is a much

later understanding of that. I mean, I think the earlier visions of that God would give would give him a body and give him much more recognizably humanlike features. Right, Yeah, And as the author points out again, you have various messengers and agents popping up in various polytheistic religions, And of course I instantly thought about the avatars and Hinduism, by which a single divine entity may take various forms,

you know, some much more human than others. The author points out though, that you know that this ultimately shows the continued role of transcendence in religion. There's this increasing distance in religious tradition between the world of the gods in the world of humans. So if you look back to Greek myths, uh, you know, there was a lot of interplay between the gods and humans a lot of drama,

direct drama between gods and humans. You look to the Egyptian model, and there's also this sense that this is all happening in the same world in our world. But then there's this growing distance between the place where God is and the place where humans reside, and it then necessitates these holy intermediaries where stead of God showing up and saying, hey, I'm a bit ticked at you over this, and angels like, hey, um, God sent me. Yeah, yeah, he's not really happy about this whole apple thing, or

he said to call off the whole sacrifice your kid thing. Yeah, yeah, I just got the message to middle management. Yes. Now, just as angels don't really have a huge presence in the Bible, uh, they're also rarely named. Gabriel is the first angel mentioned in the Book of Daniel, and he he doesn't have a lot of peers. I mean mostly it's just Michael, the archangel as the other named angel um and as the author points out here, Gabriel winds

up doing quite a bit of the heavy lifting. He interprets Daniel's visions in the Old Testament, he appears to Zacharias and announces the birth of John the Baptist in the New Testament, of course, appears to marry like we already mentioned. And then in Islamic tradition he reveals the Koran to the prophet Mohammed, and of course there he has other adventures outside of these books as well, various you know myths, legends, even you know pop cultural examples.

For instance, Uh, Gabriel shows up in various bits of Jewish legend and lore, various bits of Islamic legend and lore, so he's associated with the Moon and early Jewish writings as well as in medieval Christian astrology. In Moroccan traditions, he is a Sidna Jebri according to Carol Rose, and is said to have delivered to Addam all the tools that he needed to survive outside of Paradise, which kind of makes him sound like a Prometheus figure. Oh yeah, totally.

Though also I would say in the Garden of Eden story, the serpent itself is very much a Prometheus figure. That's right, Yeah, I read that. In Northern English traditions, there's a We've mentioned the wild hunt and various death dogs and hell hounds on the show before. Uh. There are also the Gabriel Hounds, which are you know, basically just death dogs of the wild hunt. And then, of course we have some very memorable performances from from recent film history in

which somebody plays Gabriel. Uh. Tilda Swinton played a ubl Gabriel in two thousand fives Constantine, which um was maybe. Yeah, I remember it as being fun. I haven't seen it since it came out. It's a probably an imperfect adaptation of the comic book character, but it has a lot of fun weirdness in it. I mean, Tilda Swinton as a rebel angel Um, oh god, what's his name? Plays the devil? Oh? He played what's his name? He played Dino Velvet in Um eight millimeter? Hold on looking it up,

Vigo Mortenson. No, no, you're thinking of your thinking of the next film we're going to talk about. Oh oh geez, Sorry sorry sorry. Peter Stormar, Yes, yes, he plays a wonderful kind of like coked up Satan in that film We believe in Nothing Gabriel Nothing. Yeah. Yeah, he's a lot of fun in that. And of course the other big Gabriel performance that comes to mind, Christopher walk Can as a rebel Gabriel in three out of five Prophecy films with the with Vigo Mortenson as the devil in

that one. Yeah, the Vigo played the devil in the first one, and um yeah, I think what who else was in that? A number of actors showed up in that franchise. Oh man, I'm seeing lots of names of Virginia Madson of Highlander to fame, Eric Stolts, Eric Stults, that's right, yeah, Elias Kotaus, Amanda plumber Well and for a written and directed by the man who wrote Highlander,

So it has strong Highlander there. Yeah, that Cannon's I mean, well, you know, it's like like this, Like we've said before, there's the idea that to understand the mythology, you have to you have to accept all forms of the mytholo. You have to include all forms of the myth So we ultimately have to incorporate um the Prophecy films into our understanding of of angelic lore. I was just thinking about something that this kind about maybe the sexually isn't

all that interesting, just let me put it together. So in order to have a really good understanding of a mythological tradition, you need to know all of the versions of the myth that you can and hold them all in your head at the same time, understand where they come from, how they fit together, and how the myth

varies in in all of its different faces. But as we talked about last time, one way in which you have to just pick one version of the myth is if you're going to engage in storytelling, right, because you can't tell all versions of the story at the same time. That's not enjoyable as a story, So you have to pick one way there. But the other time when you really have to pick one version of the myth is if it's official dogma and people have to believe it.

If people have to believe it, they have to believe it one way or another, in which case you also have to pick one version of the story. So I think that's kind of interesting that whether you are trying to keep a child entertained or whether you want to lay down the law, that's when you have to pick

one version and ignore all the others. One exception of this that I like that you you see occurring in various treatments, but one of the most noteworthy is probably um that second Batman from from Christopher Nolan the one in which Heath Ledger plays the Joker. Uh, the Joker gives his own origin story what a couple or maybe three different times, and it's always different. It's a play

on that. Some say they came from such and such, some say it was this, you know, establishing multiple possible mythologies behind a character, which which I kind of like, Well, I think that Joker is uh, that does sound really cool. I think that Heath Ledger Joker is supposed to embody chaos and canonical unity is order. Uh. You know what that really means is in order to understand the mythology you need to understand the chaos of canonical diversity. Yeah,

all right, sounds good to me. Let's let's put that on the tree, Chaos angel go right at the top um because again, yeah, I'd love to see some some Christmas Angel tree toppers that invoked some of these other ideas. I mean, there's some really beautiful, weird visions of angels out there, and and certainly, you know, traditional artistic treatments, but also more modern stuff. I'm thinking about the various

like the seraphims of of Michael W. Kluda. Um. Certainly you could put a Christopher walking up there at the top. I think that would be great. All right, Well, uh, Joe, I think we've completely decorated this Christmas tree for the year. The trimming is complete, and now it really it only remains for us to put some presents underneath this tree.

And by that, I of course mean listener mail. We would love to hear from everyone out there if you have some sort of a Christmas tree or holiday decoration tradition that ties into what we've discussed here. We would love to hear from you about it. Uh. You know, it's certainly not just Christmas decorations. I'm oh, I'm very interested in very secular holiday decoration traditions, or some version of holiday traditions that also meld with other systems of

faith or mythologies or fandoms. I think that's all on the table, and I want to hear about it. Does anybody decorate their tree according to the strict instructions of Hugo Elm with no deviations whatsoever? If so, I want to know about that. Oh, man, I want to see a Hugo Elm tree. Now, you know, it's it's basically like to come back to the Bible. It's like the the the instructions of how to build the tent that houses the Ark of the Covenant. You know, it's so specific,

but surely somebody's recreated it. You shall decorate, as the commandant says. All right. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find is wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just ask that you rate,

review and subscribe. I think you can still go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and that will send you over to our I heart page and if you go there, there's a place to click for our store and you can buy sut or something with our logo on it or a cool monster on it. There are a couple of couple a couple of listener created designs in the mix as well. They're pretty exciting. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

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