Yule Trivia

1. The Julbock or Yule-goat is a ubiquitous symbol of the winter holidays in Scandinavian countries. A throwback to Pre-Christian times, the Julbock is a Pagan Yule symbol that was gradually absorbed into Christian holiday customs. In the Norse pagan religion, the goat was the conveyance of the gods- early images of Odin in a goat-drawn cart are eerily similar to modern depictions of Santa Claus. As Christianity became the norm, the Yule-goat remained popular as a trickster figure, a stand-in for the devil who accompanied the elf Tomten, and later, St Nick, on gift-giving missions. It became customary for men of the villages to dress up as the Julbock and play pranks on the unsuspecting. Today, the Julbock is most often represented in modern times by a straw figurine of a goat, traditionally made from the last grain of the harvest, bundled in red ribbons and kept as a token of hope for the New Year.

2. The first record of a Christmas tree is in Strasburg, Germany in 1604. German immigrants and Hessian soldiers hired by the British to fight the colonists during the American Revolution brought the Christmas tree tradition to the United States.

3.  Although the glass balls you use to decorate your tree may have been manufactured in China, Mexico, the USA, or elsewhere, the originals were invented in Germany. In the late 16th century the small German town of Lauscha, then in the Duchy of Sachsen-Coburg, now in the German state of Thuringia (Thüringen), became known for its glass-blowing (Glasbläserei). The Thuringia region had been home to glassmaking as early as the 12th century. Lauscha, located in a river valley, had several elements needed for glass-making: timber (for firing the glass ovens) and sand. (Nearby Jena would later become famous for its optical glass.) Christoph Müller and Hans Greiner set up Lauscha's first glassworks in 1597. Soon other Glashütten (glassworks) were established in the town. Lauscha's Glashütten eventually produced drinking glasses, flasks, glass bowls, glass beads (Glasperlen), and even glass eyes (1835).

In 1847 Hans Greiner (a descendent of the Hans Greiner who had established Lauscha's first glassworks) began producing glass ornaments (Glasschmuck) in the shape of fruits and nuts. These Glaskugeln were made in a unque hand-blown process combined with molds (formgeblasener Christbaumschmuck). The inside of the ornament was made to look silvery, at first with mercury or lead, then later using a special compound of silver nitrate and sugar water. Greiner's sons and grandsons, Ernst (b. 1847), Otto (b. 1877), Willi (b. 1903), and Kurt (b. 1932), carried on the Christmas ornament tradition. (See the Greiner Web link below.) They were also responsible for another product: glass marbles.

Soon these unique glass Christmas ornaments were being exported to other parts of Europe. By the 1870's, Lauscha was exporting its unique glass ornaments to Britain. Glass ornaments had become popular in 1846 when an illustration of Queen Victoria's Christmas tree was printed in a London paper. The royal tree was decorated with glass ornaments from Prince Albert's native land of Germany. In the 1880s the American dime-store magnate F. W. Woolworth discovered Lauscha's Glaskugeln during a visit to Germany. He made a fortune by importing the German glass ornaments to the U.S.