A royal Christmas tree became American by losing a tiara

Britain had long decorated homes with evergreens at Christmas, but a whole decorated tree was unknown there until the 19th century. Queen Charlotte, the German-born wife of George III, put up a Christmas tree at a party for children in 1800. For years the custom hardly spread beyond the royal family.

Queen Victoria grew up with it. On Christmas Eve 1832, at 13, she wrote in her journal about two trees "hung with lights and sugar ornaments," with the presents placed around them. In 1840 she married her German cousin, Prince Albert, and the next year the custom spread further as wealthier middle-class families followed the royal fashion. In 1847 Albert wrote that his children's delight in their Christmas trees was no less than his and his brother's had been.

In December 1848 The Illustrated London News described the trees at Windsor Castle in detail and showed the main one in a woodcut, with the royal family gathered around it. Other papers picked up the report. Within ten years, Christmas trees were common in middle-class and upper-class homes.

Two years later the picture crossed the Atlantic. For Christmas 1850, Godey's Lady's Book, a women's magazine published in Philadelphia, printed a copy. It was the same engraving with a few changes. The queen's tiara was gone, Prince Albert's moustache was gone, and their faces had been altered. The scene was now an American family at home.

Some Americans already knew the custom. German immigrants had brought the decorated tree with them, and Hessian soldiers had put one up in Quebec in 1781. But the Godey's picture was the first widely circulated image of a decorated Christmas tree in America. The art historian Karal Ann Marling called Victoria and Albert "the first influential American Christmas tree." The folk-culture historian Alfred Shoemaker wrote that nothing did more to spread the custom across America in the 1850s than Godey's.

The magazine printed the picture again in 1860. By the 1870s a Christmas tree had become common in American homes, and in 1889 President Benjamin Harrison and his wife, Caroline, put up the first Christmas tree in the White House.