The Glessner House Christmas Tree

John and Frances (Macbeth) Glessner, both born in the 1840s, would have seen the tradition of a Christmas tree evolve during their childhood. Virtually unknown outside of Germany until Queen Victoria and Prince Albert introduced the custom to Great Britain that decade, Christmas trees quickly started to appear in American homes. Frances Glessner’s journal provides interesting information about the Christmas trees that would have been displayed at 1800 S. Prairie Avenue, although the references are usually brief, as the tree was typically in place for less than 48 hours.

The Glessners moved into their new home on December 1, 1887. The first Christmas tree was decorated on Christmas Day, Frances Glessner noting simply “the children are today trimming a Xmas tree in the school room.” (Most of the journal entry describes the gifts given and received).

George Glessner, a talented amateur photographer, documented the tree in 1888. Frances Glessner wrote, “We all hung up our stockings and trimmed our pretty little tree just three feet high. It stands on the table in the school room.” As was typical for the period, trees were small and were placed on a table. The photograph shows the variety of decorations used including candles, a foil-paper covered cardboard bird at the top, tinsel, three types of garlands (tinsel, glass beads, and popcorn), blown-glass ornaments, and miniature drums.

The year 1898 was special as both of the Glessners’ children had married that year, so were celebrating their first Christmas in their own homes – apartments located in a large building on the 2000 block of South Indiana Avenue. George and Frances each received some of the ornaments that they had used to decorate the school room tree:

“John and I went over towards noon to call on the young people. We found them all very happy – the baby sleeping soundly. A tiny tree was decorated with balls and ornaments from the first tree George ever had and which have been used every Christmas since.”

Among the ornaments given to George and his wife Alice, was a special glass piece known as a kugel. Unlike the thin-walled glass ornaments that became popular later on, kugels were heavy glass ornaments usually lined with silver, which gave the glass a deep rich color. The ornament was purchased by the Glessners during their visit to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia during the summer of 1876. It is painted with simple gold decoration, and features the dates of 1776 and 1876, denoting the centennial of the United States. The kugel was passed down through several generations of George’s family, before being returned to Glessner house in 2018. It is the only original family ornament in the collection today.

With the Glessner children married and away from home, Frances Glessner usually selected friends – often the age of her children – to decorate the Christmas tree. Favorites included the architect Hermann von Holst, whom the Glessners unofficially “adopted” as a young adult after his parents returned to Germany; he always spent the holiday with the Glessners. In 1900, Hermann “trimmed our Christmas tree and staid all night to see the fun in the morning.” After he married, his wife Lucy joined in the annual tradition. Other favorites to assist with the tree trimming included the principal harpist of the Chicago Symphony, Enrico Tramonti, and his wife Juliette. The Glessners’ grandchildren start participating in the decorating activities by 1905.

The Glessners had switched to a larger tree by 1902, when Frances Glessner wrote in her journal, “the children all came home Christmas morning at ten o’clock when we lighted the tree which stood in the hall. All of the family and household were in the hall.” The tree was still lit with candles at this point, so the lighting was a major part of the celebration with everyone gathered to observe the tree briefly illuminated with its lit candles (perhaps 15-20 minutes) before the candles were extinguished.

Electric lights were first incorporated on the Glessner Christmas tree in 1911, and the display was quite elaborate. Few people had electric lights at this time, the first strings being introduced by General Electric in 1903, although Frances Glessner noted seeing individual electric lights on the tree of a friend in 1900. Strings of lights were initially quite expensive, and, as few people had electric outlets, were designed to screw into a light bulb socket of a nearby wall sconce or chandelier.

The festivities around the Christmas tree for 1911 began with the arrival of the fresh tree from The Rocks, the Glessners’ summer estate in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. John Glessner noted that five trees were delivered for use in their home, and the homes of their son George, daughter Frances, sisters-in-law Helen and Anna (who shared an apartment), and neighbors James and Narcissa Thorne (later known for her meticulous Thorne Rooms, on permanent display at the Art Institute).

Three of the trees from The Rocks were delivered to these Prairie Avenue homes: (L-R) James and Narcissa Thorne (1708), George and Alice Glessner (1706), and Blewett and Frances Lee (1700).

John Glessner wrote that an electrician with International Harvester was recruited for the special electric light display: 

“Cheney the electrician spent all of Saturday and Sunday over our Christmas tree and it was wonderfully pretty. The tree came from The Rocks and was placed in an alcove made of curtains in the main hall, had many and various colored lights that “flashed” and twinkled; there were spotlights of various colors thrown on it and snow fell from the canopy over it.

“It was lighted first at 9 pm for our company at Sunday (Christmas Eve) supper – 19 in all at the table, and again at 10 o’clock on Christmas morning for the benefit of the children and our guests and servants – 36 or 37 in all, so that the tree blazed for about two hours on Sunday night and about two hours on Monday morning and then was taken down. It had its day and was no more. And before evening we were back to the original condition with only the memory.”

Despite the elaborate preparations for the tree, it was not photographed, but we know what the bulbs on the tree would have looked like. The earliest bulbs were pear-shaped, like early Edison bulbs, but in 1910 General Electric switched to a round bulb with a small “exhaust tip” at the end. This shape was used until 1919, when the cone shape resembling a flame was adopted; this remained the standard version until the 1970s and is now popular again as a “vintage style” bulb. The photos below show a light kit produced by General Electric in 1910. (To learn more about the history of electric Christmas tree lights, visit Old Christmas Tree Lights, from which the images below were retrieved.)

In 1978, Frances Glessner Lee’s two surviving children, John Glessner Lee and Martha Lee Batchelder, donated The Rocks Estate to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, with the stipulation that a crop always be grown in the fields. Christmas trees were the chosen crop, and for more than three decades, a tree was shipped from The Rocks each year to decorate the main hall at Glessner House. That tradition ended in 2019, when the building housing the shipping operation burned to the ground; since that time a tree has been sourced locally.

In order to tell the full story of Christmas at the house, two trees are decorated each year. A small three-foot tree sits on the table in the schoolroom – this is where the original kugel is hung. A larger tree is displayed in the main hall. There are no electric lights on either tree, interpreting the period prior to the grand electric light display of 1911.