Bringing Christmas Home: How Evergreen Trees Came to Iowa

Christmas trees weren’t a big deal on the Iowa frontier. Not at first, anyway.

For many early settlers, Christmas was quiet. Sometimes it meant church. Sometimes, nothing at all. Winter was hard. Money was tight. There was wood to cut, animals to feed, and snow to shovel. Decorating a tree wasn’t high on the list.

 

The truth was, a lot of early Iowans didn’t know what a Christmas tree was. One widely reprinted explanation in American newspapers during the 1850s tried to spell it out plainly, calling it “a German custom, recently introduced into this country, and designed chiefly for the delight of children.”

 

The idea came west with German immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s, in places like Dubuque, Davenport, and Burlington. Back home, they’d grown up with evergreen trees brought indoors and lit with candles. When they did the same thing in Iowa, their neighbors didn’t know what to think.

 

Still, trees slowly took root.

 

Frontier Christmas trees weren’t anything like the ones we know today. They were small. Tabletop trees were common. Most families didn’t use a full tree—just a trimmed branch nailed upright or set in a bucket.

 

The tree wasn’t fancy. The decorations were simple and homemade. No store-bought ornaments, glitter, or fancy lights. Those were a hundred years in the future.

 

Candles came first. Little tapers tied to branches with string or melted in place with wax. They were lit for only a few minutes and watched like hawks. No one took a chance of fire. Harper’s Weekly captured both the beauty and danger of the moment when it described trees “brilliant with tapers, and laden with gifts,” while children stared in awe, their excitement nearly “overcoming all fear of the flames.”

 

Food did most of the decorating. Godey’s Lady’s Book noted that Christmas trees were often “hung with apples, cakes, nuts, and sweetmeats,” meant less for display than for the simple pleasure of children.

 

Apples were popular, especially bright red ones saved for weeks in a cellar. Oranges were rare and exciting. Hard candies were tied on with thread. Gingerbread men and sugar cookies dangled from branches. Popcorn was strung into long chains during cold evenings when families sat close to the stove and talked.

 

Scraps of paper were folded into stars. Paper chains looped around branches. Tin bits were polished until they shined. Sometimes a special ornament—carved, stitched, or whittled—became the pride of the whole tree.

 

Tree toppers came later.

 

Gifts were modest, if there were any at all. A mitten. A book. A pocketknife. Presents were placed under the tree instead of hanging from it. Some families waited until the candles were blown out before handing anything over.

 

For a lot of Iowa kids, the first Christmas tree they saw wasn’t at home. It was at church or in a schoolhouse. Notices in Midwestern newspapers during the 1860s and 1870s often mentioned that “a Christmas tree was provided for the Sunday school,” brightly lit and bearing small gifts for every child present.

 

By the 1850s and 1860s, newspapers sometimes mentioned Christmas trees at Sunday school celebrations. One tree served an entire community. Candles were lit. Someone handed out treats. For children who’d seen nothing like it, the sight was unforgettable.

 

Even then, Christmas trees weren’t everywhere. Some families never adopted them. Others thought they were odd or unnecessary. A few ministers worried they were too flashy or too foreign.

 

That changed after the Civil War. By the late 19th century, holiday editorials were already looking back, noting that what had once seemed strange was now familiar. As one put it, “What was once thought a foreign fancy has become one of the fixed joys of an American Christmas.”

 

By the 1870s, Christmas trees were everywhere. Town halls, schools, and middle-class homes had them. Merchants sold ornaments. Newspapers described candlelit trees glowing against dark winter windows.

 

On the frontier, Christmas trees were never about excess. They were about warmth. Light. Color. A living green thing brought inside when the world outside was frozen solid.

 

For early Iowans, putting up a Christmas tree wasn’t a tradition they’d always known. It was something they chose. A small, hopeful act in the middle of a long winter.

 

And for a lot of frontier families, that was more than enough.