Tuileries it has gradually spread over the whole French capital. The Empress Eugenie was very fond of it, and did a great deal to introduce the custom. Until now it has been always looked upon in France as entirely German and especially Alsatian—an opinion which is very nearly accurate.
When, in 1860, Christmas was celebrated for the first time in the German St. Joseph's School in the Vilette, the gentlemen who had arranged the fete went to every market to get a fir-tree. At last they succeeded in finding a very small one, about three feet high, which had been exposed for sale by some chance.
In 1869 fir-trees could be got at most of the markets in Paris. In 1870 the German armies celebrated their Christmas in German fashion in France, and many bright lights shone forth on that Christmas Eve. To-day, Paris requires every year 40,000 Christmas-trees, one-fourth of which are used by German, old Alsatian, Austrian, and Swiss families.
Contrary to the custom in Germany, where the tree is sawed off above the root, and fixed on a wooden cross painted green, or planted in a small garden, decorated with moss, the Frenchman takes the tree out with the roots, wraps straw around them, and thus puts it into the room, often planting it in the garden after it has done its duty as an ornament of Yuletide.
To the Netherlands, Russia, especially St. Petersburg and Moscow—where, however, it is only the custom among the better classes— and to Italy, the Christmas-tree has also come from Germany.
Milan, a semi-German town, cultivates the custom extensively; and in Rome and Naples the bright Christmastree can be seen illuminating the gloom of Christmas Eve in many other homes besides those of the German artists who have taken up their abode in the sunny south. In Hungary the custom first began in 1830, and it is still confined to the aristocracy and the Germans settled there
