Fun Facts about Christmas Trees and Christmas Tree Crafts

This time of year Christmas trees are starting to pop up all over (if they haven’t already been up for a month!) so it feels like a good time to share some trivia and fun facts about Christmas trees. Share these with your kids or in the classroom.

Evergreens were used as decoration in ancient Egypt and Rome, but the tradition of using an evergreen tree in the home as a Christmas decoration (lit with candles back then) can be traced to Germany and made its way to the United States in the 1800s. According to this post all about the history of Christmas trees from History.com, Martin Luther was widely credited as being the first to put candles on trees.

The first records of Christmas trees being used in America were in the 1820s, and they were used by Germans in Pennsylvania. The use of Christmas trees on both sides of the Atlantic began to take hold when Queen Victoria was sketched with her family around a Christmas tree.

Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states, and the iconic Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has been lighting up New York City since 1931. The first lights were added to the tree two years later, and now the tree has more than 50,000 lights.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, between 25 and 30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the United States every year. About 350,000 acres are used for growing Christmas trees in the United States, and generally three seedlings are planted for every tree that is harvested. The average growing time for a tree to become big enough to be a Christmas tree is seven years.

Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington are the top tree-growing states. When it comes to artificial trees, 80 percent of them are made in China.

Now that you know a little bit more about Christmas trees, how about some Christmas tree crafts? Check out these posts for some fun projects with a Christmas tree theme:

Faux stained glass Christmas tree craft
Life cycle of a Christmas tree
Make a 3D tree from a piece of paper
Christmas tree slime recipe
Roll a Christmas tree printable game
Christmas tree cutting fine motor activity
Pompom Christmas tree craft

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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