I started wondering last week about Christmas traditions.  I looked at all the red and green that is used for Christmas decorating.  I asked several very bright people if they knew why the popularity of red and green.  No one knew the answer.  So I went on an hunt for the answer.  I know you are all thinking, “This woman has way too much time on her hands”.  But I really don’t have that much time but once I have a question without an answer I become a regular Dora the Explorer.

So gentle readers, the web site http://www.sensationalcolor.com posted the following explanation:

PINE GREEN & APPLE RED

I think the most likely root of the red and green tradition dates back to the 1300s when Adam and Eve’s Day was celebrated on December 24th.  Each year on this day churches traditionally presented a Paradise Play depicting the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Now you can’t have a story about Adam and Eve without an apple tree but since it wasn’t easy to find a real tree full of ripe, red apples during the winter apples someone came up with the idea of fastening apples to the branches of a pine tree.  This decorated pine tree represented the Tree of Good and Evil.  But the tree wasn’t only seen in the play.  Churches began adding a tree donning red apples into their Christmas displays.

The decorated tree that began as a prop for the Paradise play was so popular especially in Germany, that people began to put pine trees up in their homes during the holiday, decorating them with red apples, as the church folks had done and the tradition of having a Christmas treee was born.

The idea spread and both Christmas trees and the color combination of red and green were well on its way to becoming official symbols of the Christmas holiday.

Wishing you peace and happiness this Christmas.

Bernadette