Raistlin The Wizard

One of the Christmas traditions both Muggles and Wizards share is putting up and decorating a Christmas tree. A big difference is that that although every Wizard uses a real tree, a lot of Muggles use a sort of fake tree which they can reuse over and over which takes down from the experience of picking up the tree you like the most. The fake ones they use are all the same with no personality or individuality. Also there are all sorts of debates as to what is better for the environment, a natural tree of fake tree. The types of natural trees most commonly use are fir and pine. Fir has the advantage of not shedding its needles when they dry out.

Although the true origin and the date of the first setting up of trees are not fully disclosed, what we know for certain is that the Germans were the first ones to use it on a national scale and it was considered and expression of the German culture and of Gemutlichkeit, particularly among emigrants overseas.  As for Britain, they had been decorating the home with evergreens for a long time but decorating an entire small tree inly came to place two centuries ago. Eventually it also become tradition to set up public Christmas tree with cities trying to outdo each other with bigger and bigger trees ever since. Although, nothing can beat the twelve Christmas trees Hogwarts has in its Great Hall every year. Every wizard who ever witnessed it can attest to the truth of this statement.

The time for setting up and taking down a Christmas tree varies greatly according to the place where you live and your religious background. In the past Christmas trees weren’t set up and decorated until Christmas Even on December 24th, but nowadays starting from December you can start seeing people put up all sorts of Christmas decorations. The most common date to take the trees down is on January 7th.

Honestly, there are no limits to the itens used to decorate Christmas trees. Over the years Muggles have gone crazy in order to outdo each other. Balls, bowties, strings, popcorn strings, confetti, fake snow, present shaped objects, candy canes, santas, stockings, all of these can be found in regular Muggle trees, being the most common colours, silver, gold, red and green. Of course in the old days there were no such objects available so apples, nuts and other natural ingredients were used. I daresay us Wizards have it a lot better, we can enchant our trees to have snow falling on it or put real live fairies living in the tree.

Christmas trees and Christmas were throughout the years very closely related to the Christian religion, but Christmas is evolving to become more of a Holiday in general then a religious holiday. Therefore more and more we can see Christmas ornaments and Christmas trees in countries were Christian are a very small part of the population, mainly in Asian countries.