History of the CHRISTMAS TREE [French Christmas Village Tour]

Good morning! In our last video, if you missed it, we went to the largest Christmas market in all of France, in the city of Strasbourg. Now in this episode, first we're going to run a few little van life Europe errands, and then we are going to take you to two smaller Christmas villages. First up though, the weather is a little chilly here. We got to get G Money a jacket, so when he goes on his walks, he doesn't get cold. So we found a pet store, and we're going to do that right now. That one looks nice on you, buddy. Look at there. No, don't go in there! I think we found the one. I think we found the one. What do you think, buddy? You in the pet store? Okay. Well, I went to the grocery store, and I spent a total of 12 euros, so maybe 13 or 14 dollars, and I have successfully decorated our van for Christmas. It may not be the most beautiful decorations ever, but it's festive. It's blinky, and I got lots of Santa Clauses and reindeer. So the van is ready for Christmas, guys. I even found this ornament that lights up, that has a little Christmas tree inside. I don't know if it'll come through on the video, but that's our Christmas tree. It's about an inch and a half tall. Perfect size for van life. Early this morning, we left Strasburg. It was a Monday morning. We planned that trip so we were in the city on a Sunday, because parking for our big van is a lot easier and cheaper when we do that city on Sunday, and we think it may be that way for a lot of cities here in Europe. So we'll be checking out cities on Sundays and seeing how that goes. But we left there early, ran some errands, and we came to a little campsite to do some laundry just outside of a town called Oberlin or Oberlein. Tomorrow, we're going to take you down into the town square to this little village to check out this Christmas market. And then once we do that, we have another Christmas market we're going to go to the next day that has some pretty important history to it, if you're a fan of the Christmas tree. But we needed a day to rest and get some laundry done. Kurt's back here in the back doing some video editing. Hey guys, Merry Christmas! Yes, yes. So with that, we'll see you guys tomorrow for another French Christmas market. All right guys, this is our campground. And as you can see, there are a lot of campers here, and some are still showing up. And I've got G out for a walk in the morning. It looks like we have some grapes vines next door. We are in the Alsace region, which is in the beautiful wine region of France, and also a place where they have a beautiful tour or route of Christmas villages. And we saw in northern France and in southern Belgium where most of the campgrounds were closed. That is the case over here as well, but there are a few open. And it looks like along here, the ones that are open might be full, which is not our favorite. I'm sure it's good for the company who has it, but the bathrooms were a little backed up. And I should add that they are good bathrooms, good hot showers, clean toilets, clean, good facilities, heated. So everything's good on that note. We have full electricity, dump stations, water, the full amenities. It's $21 a night, including Wi-Fi. And so what's really cool is it's a little area where we're able to get G out, and you can see him doing a bunch of smelling. And he's also getting used to his new jacket. He's not sure what to think about that, but for those of you who've ever tried walking cats on the leash, that was a learning process as well. So he'll get it figured out if he wants to come outside, and it's definitely better than him getting too cold. All right, we have left the campsite that was maybe 10 minutes outside of town. We've come in town to where they have a nice free parking area, even for motorhomes. So this is where we'll be spending the night. Nothing glamorous, but what's nice about it is it's really close to the Obernai. I think that's how you say the name of this village. Christmas markets. So this one seems like it may be more of a daytime market. We're headed down. Maybe we'll get some lunch at this one. Let's go. Welcome to Obernai. It looks like an amazing little village. So this is definitely more of a quaint and small village. And you come into this city, you can see it's an old sort of medieval walled city. And you come in through the gates, and immediately you open up to a beautiful village. And this is smaller and quaint, certainly than Strasbourg. Wow. And so this is as much of a daytime market as it is a nighttime market. And you can see it's 1130 and the sun is out, which has been so rare for us. We haven't seen true sunshine since we landed in Europe, which has been, I don't even know how long, over two weeks, maybe three weeks, I don't know. Okay. It's like we eat here. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry we don't speak French. So yeah, yeah, yeah. It's okay. Cheese. Yeah. Croutons. Exactly. So we just did Mexico, Central America, and all of South America for four years. Four years. And then we just put our van on a ship and brought it here. It's in the parking lot. Give her the money, you have a line. For three or four years. All right, we got two French onion soups here from the market. And a pretzel au gratin. It's got cheese and little bits of ham or something. It's so crispy and tasty. It's delicious. We're about to taste the soup. We'll check back in in one second. Oh my. I can hear the crouton crunching from here. How's the soup? Oh, it's so good. And the good thing is it warms your hands up. It's a little thick. Thicker than I think we're used to for a French onion soup in the United States. But we are in France. And this is how she said they eat it with the cheese and the croutons on top. Oui, oui. Bonjour. It's so good. All right. Le vin chaud. It's warm spiced wine. And we are in the wine region. It's got a little kick to it. It's really, really good. But we're just having one. And I'll only have a few sips. Because you have to try this when you're here. But guys, this is really, really, really good. So as we travel down through here, I think one of the coolest things about these little towns, these little villages, is just how unique they are. And their structures with the wooden beams. And I guess that's some kind of concrete or stucco between them. But they're just beautiful little like medieval villages. And then when they tuck away all this little Christmas themed stuff, all the pine and the warm wine and all the little booths, it just kicks it up a notch. But I got to tell you, if you're coming here through here in the summertime, this place is still unique. And in warm weather, I'm sure they have the wine out here and other delights. But this place is just a beautiful little medieval walled city. It looks like snow is not leaving empty handed. No, we got two little sweet fritters, something or another. I think they're called baguettes. Baguettes. Yeah, I don't know if these have apple in them or not. But this is topped with Nutella and cinnamon sugar. So we're gonna go to the van and make a big pot of coffee and have a snack. All right, guys, this concludes our daytime tour. Not sure if we'll come back here at night. The temperature is supposed to drop to 19 degrees within the next day or two and snow is in the forecast tomorrow. When I say snow, I don't mean the snow you know. I'll be there though. I mean the white powdery stuff that makes it dangerous to drive. So anyway, we're excited to see some snow. Hopefully it will. But we're headed back to the van to get warmed up. All right, we're headed back in to see the Obernai Christmas Market as the sun starts to set and the twinkle lights start to come on. So we're gonna be able to show you a day versus night on this little Christmas Market. But as we walk back in, which one thing I want to tell you is the parking here is amazing. It's only like a three minute walk to the downtown little center. But look at all these motorhomes. There's our spot back there in the corner under a tree so the kitties have some leaves to watch for birds. I gotta tell y'all it's getting chillier and chillier. Gotta layer up. I'm all bundled up and got multiple layers. I haven't gotten my winter coat out yet so I got like five layers on and they're all color mismatched. Sorry guys. He's even pulled out the gloves. If Kurt's putting on gloves, it's getting chilly. But to be honest, the cold weather is kind of nice with the Christmas spirit going on. But I think some hot apple cider might be in my evening. And y'all gotta see this motorhome up here. It's all decked out for Christmas. Let's go check it out. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. Dashing through the snow in one horse open sleigh. O'er the fields we go, laughing all the way. Bells on bobtails ring, making spirits bright. What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight. Oh jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. What fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. What fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh. O'er the fields we go, laughing all the way. We are in our fourth Alsatian village. Going to see our fourth Christmas market. This one has some very special history to it. Especially if you're like me and you love to decorate a Christmas tree. I'm starting to notice a little theme in this town. There are Christmas trees everywhere. Now I know in a Christmas village you expect to see Christmas trees but there's a ton of them here and it's for a very special reason. This town has the first recorded historical event where it's written down and documented the very first time someone decorated a tree for Christmas. So this town is the home of the Christmas tree and there was no way I was gonna miss going to the place where one of my favorite things was started. So inside this church they tell the history of how the Christmas tree started and through the centuries to where we are now. It looks like this is the area where the first Christmas trees started to be decorated. They picked these trees because of course they're green in the middle of winter and it was around I believe 15, 1521 that the first time it is recorded of people for the holidays decorating a tree and they started by hanging apples on their trees. It didn't take long by the end of the 1500s there were Christmas trees in every town center in front of every church. They were still decorating them with apples to remind us of the original sin of Adam and Eve but they had started to add the little communion crackers to start to bring more of the the church element into the Christmas tree. By the 1600s the apples remained, the communion hosts I believe they're called remained, but they started to add bright colorful flowers, roses made out of paper. They're getting more festive. In the 1700s they started to actually create more of an artistic metal type decoration for the trees and it started to take the shape of stars and such and all of this is tied back to religious elements throughout this time but throughout the 1700s you start to see more and more different elements added to the trees. So towards the end of the 1700s and into the 1800s a lot of the major religious elements started to disappear from the Christmas trees and they became more known as being for the children to celebrate Christmas and at this time you started to see candy and sweets and gingerbread decorations start to take over the Christmas trees. By the end of the 1800s the gingerbread and the other treats the nuts and stuff were starting to be coated in sugar and chocolate and they were also printing out pictures of famous people or famous things and sticking them on the sweets usually using a sugar coating or a chocolate. By the end of the 1800s in 1870 a war was happening here and it had ended and the Alsatians held on to the Christmas tree to kind of help recover from the the turmoils of war and it was said that in every Alsatian household you would find a Christmas tree and this is when you started to see angels appear on trees and people were starting to make ornaments out of small pieces of wood stars and stuff like that and some carvings were starting to appear of mangers and things like that so the Christmas tree was starting to take on a for sure life of its own and was starting to spread all across France. The beginning of the 1900s is when the angel topper appeared it's when people started to put angels on top of their trees it's also when they kind of symbolically brought the apple decorations back to the tree but they did this with little glass balls so our traditional globe shaped colorful balls that you see on almost every Christmas tree today started as glass balls to resemble apples right at the beginning of the 1900s. Throughout the early history of the Christmas tree from time to time you'd see people go through spells of putting candles on their tree but of course that would usually end in fire but for centuries people have wanted to light light up their Christmas trees and the 60s and even more so into the 1970s the Christmas lights arrived strands of bright colorful lights for your Christmas tree and also this is when the Christmas tree ornament really really took shape and painting them and carving them in all different colors became a thing so now you know how the Christmas tree was born. After learning all about the history of the Christmas tree we had to stop in and warm up with two cups of coffee and now we are headed back to the van. Now this Christmas market was definitely very small only had like six little booths but that's not what this town is about this town was about the Christmas tree which makes me incredibly happy because I love a Christmas tree but with that guys I hope you enjoyed these two markets and this special holiday video release from us. If you haven't subscribed to our channel go ahead and do that hit the notification bell so you know when we put out new videos we got a lot of cool stuff coming to you guys from here in Europe we're headed back to the van to get cozy snuggle up with our kitties we'll see you in a few days actually no we have another special holiday release video we'll see you guys tomorrow from a really really cool and supposedly very different Christmas market. Cheers guys! If you like this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos. Cheers guys!