The Bride's Christmas Tree

Above are ornament types often found on the bride's first Christmas tree in Germany.

       In Germany it is customary to give Christmas ornaments to the bride on her wedding day. Below are the original meanings attached to the traditional ornaments that hang upon the couple's first Christmas tree. The ornaments are most frequently made of glass, however, you could give a selection of these Christmas ornaments made from any number of interesting materials. A young girl might even collect each ornament herself over a longer period of time and store them in a hope chest.

      My husband's mother collected his first ornaments, one per year, every year, until he married. Then these ornaments were boxed up and gifted to me at my wedding shower.

1. Acorn - Resurrection in Christ
2. Angel - messengers from God
3. Apple - reminder to avoid temptations
4. Bell - joyful noise, announcing important news
5. Birds - bring messages of joy
6. Bird Nest - money, fortune, physical wealth
7. Carrot - good luck in the kitchen
8. Church - spiritual family/home
9. Devil - He serves St. Nickolas, according to legend, for one day every year (Christmas) as form of punishment because of his disloyalty to God.
10. Dove - symbol of the Holy Spirit, the third person of The Holy Trinity
11. Fir Tree - Everlasting life through Christ, because it remains green during winter
12. Fish - identity in Christ, provision, Peter finds the tax hidden in a fish
13. Flower Basket - symbolic of hope, it springs eternal
14. Fruit Basket - abundance of good health, harvest
15. Grape Cluster - communion with Christ and other believers
16. Heart - love
17. House - shelter
18. Orange - wealth and prosperity, during many centuries to have oranges in winter months was considered a luxury 
19. Pickle - game, extra gift goes to those who find it on their tree
20. Pine Cone - wisdom
21. Rabbit - fertility, rabbits multiply easily
22. Pink Rose - Virgin Mary
23. Yellow Rose - Friendship
24. Walnut - good fortune, also connected with telling fortunes
25. White Rose - Spiritual Love
26. Saint Nicholas - generosity and goodwill towards others, The Bishop of Myra was an abolitionist
27. Ship - passage through trouble or over troubled waters
28. Star - guiding light, early believers used the night sky to guide them on their journeys, astrologers from the east followed a constellation to find Jesus
29. Teapot - hospitality, offering tea to strangers has ancient roots
30. Tulip - A red tulip means eternal love

Ornaments Made from Angel Cross Stitch Patterns

By Prairie School and perfectly lovely addition,
I think, to a Medieval Christmas Tree.

        These little cross stitch angel patterns, created 1993, were based upon Byzantine designs. They were also intended to be produced on black canvas backgrounds. Several years ago my oldest child stitched a couple of these unusual angelic motifs for our family Christmas tree. 

Michael and Gabriel, two archangels

        The Prairie School patterns depict angels in brilliant colors, formally positioned wings and with iconographic portrait features. I've included a sample of Byzantine angels in this post so that you may make your own comparisons.
       During the medieval period senior angels were often clad in every brilliant color, while junior ranks wore white by artists. Early Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck and Fra Angelico painted angels with multicolored wings. Depictions of angels came to combine medieval notions of beauty with feminine ideals of grace and beauty, as in da Panicale's 1435 Baptism of Christ.
      The two angels on the right were painted in a 12th Century icon. They are the two archangels, Michael and Gabriel. They wear the loros of the Imperial guards. The loros is one of the most important and distinctive parts of the most formal and ceremonial type of imperial Byzantine costume. It developed out of the trabea triumphalis of the Roman consuls. The loros was a long, narrow and embroidered scarf which was wrapped around the torso and dropped over the left hand. It was embroidered with gold and heavily embellished with gems.
       You can search online to find a wider variety of angels dating from the Medieval Period, 5th century to the 15th, in order to design your own ornaments. Ebay sometimes offers old Prairie School patterns for sale as well.

View and Read About Different Angel Types from The Medieval Period:

• Corsair - Research Resource of the Pierpont Morgan Library
• The Representation of Angels and Angelic Orders from the Late Middle Ages

"A Mistletoe Maid"

A Mistletoe Maid

by Irving

 
I kissed her--yes, I did--beneath

The mystic mistletoe

When Christmas bells were pealing out

Across the drifted snow.

She was a maiden sweet to see

And just my style to boot,

And so upon her ruby lips

I placed a swift salute.

For she had twined the berried

bough

On chandelier and wall,

And wreathed it all around the door,

And draped it in the hall,

And pinned it to the picture frames,

And hung it on the latch,

And tucked it in her hair, and so

I had to toe the scratch.