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The decoration of trees and bushes growing outside has been a pagan practice to placate the Sylvan spirits since before recorded history. The habit of bringing a tree into the house to be decorated at Christmas is quite recent. In Germany it can be traced back to the beginning of the 17th century when in 1605 an anonymous author wrote, "it is the custom at Strasburg to set up fir-trees in the houses at Christmas and to deck them with roses of coloured paper, apples".
This custom was next mentioned about fifty years later when professor Dannhauer, a theologian, wrote "amongst the other absurdities which men are often more busied at Christmas than with the word of God, there is the Christmas or fir tree which they erect in their houses, hang with dolls and sweetmeats, and then shake it and cause it to shed its 'flowers'-- it is a children's game. Far better were it to lead the children to the spiritual cedar, Christ Jesus". This was voiced by many other priests and was probably the reason for the slow spread of the habit throughout Germany where it was not universally established until the 19th century.
The Christmas tree was unknown in England until the "Christbaum" was introduced by Prince Albert at Windsor Castle in 1841, and the idea spread rapidly from about 1845. The species used at that time was the European Silver fir - Abies alba, a wise choice as it holds its needles well. The first known Christmas tree sales were in 1851 in New York, when a man called Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds loaded with Balsam fir from his land in the Catskills and set up a sales lot in the city.
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