The Original Assignment: Write a blog post about the history of Christmas ornaments.
The Status: I've spent 6 hours researching, writing, and revising. I now hate writing.
The New Assignment: Write it again, only this time in my own voice, with no concern for my audience.
The Outcome:
Evergreens were used by ancient people to symbolize eternal life. Then a British dude named Saint Boniface went to Germany to convert the pagans to his religion. The pagans wanted to either A. chop down an oak tree or B. kill a boy, and His Holiness stopped them by splitting the oak tree in half, obviously. Then a fir tree either A. grew up from the middle of the oak tree fully formed, because God, or B. was nearby. So Boniface told the heathens that the fir tree was a symbol of the Holy Trinity because it was a triangle shape, and then his buddies put candles in the tree so he could keep preaching at the heathens after sunset.
Apparently the Germans loved this new idea and became fervent Christians who put on Church plays with fir trees in them. They decorated the trees with apples because of the "Tree of Paradise" (you know, the one from which treacherous Eve made perfect Adam eat, and it made them ashamed of their bodies). Some of them may have hung the trees upside down from the ceiling. I don't know why, but I will probably adopt this tradition because its awesome.
Ok, then Martin Luther took a walk in the forest and may or may not have eaten some hallucinogenic mushrooms (none of my research indicates that he did, but I'm pretty sure of it), so he was looking at the sky and it was so beautiful with the twinkling stars and evergreen branches. When he got home, instead of using words to describe what he saw, he brought a fir tree inside and attached candles to it and was all "take these mushrooms and then look at this tree with me, wife!" Or maybe he had kids and told them it reminded him of Jesus. Either way, they saw the tree and it was good.
Then everyone in Europe had Christmas trees. The Germans loved Christmas trees most of all and made ornaments out of lead and glass, then they immigrated to America, where all the Puritans were like "NO." One dude even outlawed decorations and singing and stuff, because Baby Jesus was super insulted by people having fun in his honor, I guess. But then someone sketched Queen Victoria standing in front of a Christmas tree and published it in an illustrated London newspaper, and everyone in America was like, "I NEED THAT."
So then ornaments were a thing in America. Mostly Germans made them, and then the Japanese exported them to us, and also Czechoslovakia. Then an American was like "the war is coming, how will my glass making company stay in business?" And the answer was to use a light bulb-making machine to make a whole butt load of ornaments at once. So that happened, and now everyone makes and sells and buys ornaments, even Jews and Buddhists and stuff.
Merry Christmas the end.
