APPLE VALLEY, Minn. - The Christmas trees look great at Pahl's Garden Market in Apple Valley. The varieties are plentiful and they are fresh and smelled so great in their greenhouse.
If you are into a trivia game for Christmas, here are some great factoid's.
- 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.
