Stephen Nissenbaum, author of The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Our Most Cherished Holiday (1996), wrote, "Legend has it that Charles Follen, a German-American professor at Harvard, introduced America's first Christmas tree. The source of that legend ... [was] written by a very famous British visitor to the United States, a woman named Harriet Martineau, who happened to witness the Follens' tree while she was touring New England. As Martineau wrote, 'I was present at the introduction into the new country of the German Christmas-tree.'"

 

Martineau published the story of this event in Godey's Lady's Book, a popular magazine of the time. Nissenbaum continues, "Though this was not the first American Christmas tree, it is certainly true that Charles Follen set up a Christmas tree in Martineau's presence for his son and name-sake, an endearing 5-year-old whom everybody called 'little Charley.'"

 

When Martineau arrived, Follen and his wife Eliza were fastening little candles to the tree, actually the cut-off tip of an evergreen, and hanging toys and sweets from the branches before little Charley and his play-mates got home.

 

According to Nissenbaum, "Finally, the double doors were thrown open and the children poured in, their voices instantaneously hushed. 'Their faces were upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested,' wrote Martineau. 'Nobody spoke, only Charley leaped for joy.'"

 

The children proceeded to the sweets, the adults guiding the little hands around the bright candle flames. Nissenbaum writes, "Martineau concluded her account by predicting that the Christmas tree ritual would surely become an established American tradition."

 

In 1835, Charles Follen lost his professorship at Harvard due to his out-spoken abolitionist beliefs. His friendship with William Ellery Channing led him to the Unitarian Church. Ordained in 1836, Follen had been called to the pulpit of the Second Congregational Society in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1835, now Follen Church Society.

Follen died tragically at the age of 44 when the Steamship Lexington that he was traveling on from New York to Boston caught fire and sank in a storm in Long Island Sound. He was returning home for the dedication of the new church building that he designed. The octagonal structure is still in use by the Follen Church Society, a Unitarian Universalist congregation. His memory lives on in the annual Christmas tree sale that the Follen Church began in the 1950s. Each tree sold has a tag that tells the story of the Christmas tree tradition from Germany introduced to America by the Rev. Charles Follen.

 

Source: http://www.calliope.org/follen/tree2.html

 

Aaron