How a diary revealed the roots of a Christmas tradition
Ontario woman discovered her German ancestors introduced the Christmas tree to Canada in 1780s
In Karin von Althen’s family, preparations for Christmas began in October, not with a trip to the mall, but with a hike into the bush in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
The whole family set out in search of the perfect tree, which was inevitably a balsam fir, picked for its broad, flat needles and rich scent. They marked it with a coloured ribbon so that Friedrich, her husband, could find it again in December, chop it down and hide it in the basement.
For the German-born couple, it was verboten for their three daughters and two sons to see the tree before Christmas Eve.
They decorated it with tinsel and shiny balls, but what made it really special were the candles — real ones in the early years, then later white electric candles for safety’s sake.
It was not so different from the millions of other trees that illuminate the December darkness in homes across Canada. But the tradition is dearer to von Althen, 80, than to most anyone else. The Christmas tree is her connection to her ancestors and the ritual they brought to this country 236 years ago.
“I always remind my Canadian friends at church or my neighbours that without me, they wouldn’t have a Christmas tree.”
It’s a story that begins with von Althen’s great-great-greatgrandparents, German general Friedrich von Riedesel and his wife, Baroness Friederike Charlotte Riedesel, in the community of Sorel, Que.
It tells of war and hardship, of cultures and customs, of communion and connection forged around Canada’s first illuminated Christmas tree back in 1781.
“Every Christmas, everybody has to listen to this story,” says von Althen. “I always talk about it.”
We can rhyme off the names of flying reindeer but have forgotten the couple responsible for a holiday tradition crossing the Atlantic and taking root in the frozen ground of colonial Canada. The story of their Christmas gift is contained in dusty archives and in the out-of-print memoirs of the general and the baroness. In Althen’s retelling, however, it leaps off the page. The gift of this particular holiday tradition was given in a turbulent time of loss. Unrest over British rule in the American colonies led to protest, resistance and the American War of Independence.
By May 1776, a sizable German mercenary force led by Maj.-Gen. von Riedesel had arrived in Quebec on a mission to help protect British territory and interests.
The general’s wife followed her husband to Canada with two young daughters and an infant girl (their first two children each died a year after birth) in June the next year.
“Upon first coming into view,” Baroness von Riedesel wrote in her diary, “(Quebec) appeared quite handsome.”
Her perspective changed when she stepped off the boat.
“The city of Quebec itself . . . is as dirty as possible, and very incommodious, for one is obliged to ascend a great mountain in going through the streets. There are, also, few handsome houses, but the inhabitants are polite people.”
No sooner had the general reunited with his wife and children than they were captured, along with German and British forces, after a battle in Saratoga, N.Y. They were held in Boston, transported to Virginia in late1778, then released to Britishcontrolled New York after about a year.
From there, von Riedesel was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1781 and moved to Canada. His post in Sorel, northeast of Montreal, was strategically important, but the conditions were rough. It prompted the embarrassed governor general of Canada, Sir Frederick Haldimand, to sweeten the offer by throwing in a stately home for the general and the baroness. Already partially built, it was purchased in mid-November with orders that it be made ready to occupy by Christmas.
On Dec. 3, 1781, Gen. von Riedesel wrote to Haldimand: “The inclement season of the year retards operations on our house, but I hope we will be able to move into it at the end of two weeks.”
Baroness von Riedesel takes up the tale in her diary: “To our great astonishment we were able to eat our Christmas pie in our new house — with which dish the English always celebrate Christmas Day.”
In the general’s memoirs and letters, published in1854, German military historian Max von Eelking noted: “Some English officers, who had been invited in, helped the German family to celebrate the holidays which were thus observed partly in the English and partly in the German manner.”
It was this collision of cultures against a backdrop of war that led to the first recorded instance of a tree being chopped down, dragged into the newly built home and decorated with candles — a German tradition that had not yet been adopted elsewhere.
History is made in such small gestures. Only after — sometimes long after — is the significance appreciated.
As Quebec historian Mathieu Pontbriand notes, 1781 marked the first Christmas feast that the von Riedesel family spent in freedom following years of captivity. They were in a garrison town, fearing invaders and spies lurking among Loyalist refugees fleeing the American states.
A Christmas tree would have meant comfort, a memory of their far-off home.
And although they settled in to Sorel, life was hard. In addition to a sixth child, daughter America, born in 1780, the baroness gave birth to another girl, Canada, in 1782. But the baby died a few months later, in 1783, under the helpless watch of her mother.
“We buried our beloved dead little one in Sorel,” the baroness wrote.
That August, the von Riedesels returned to Germany.
“Had it not been for this homesickness I should have been perfectly contented in Canada,” the baroness wrote. “For the climate agreed well with my children and we were beloved by and on a very pleasant footing with the people.”
In Germany, the von Riedesels had two more children: Charlotte and Georg, the last-born of the couple’s nine offspring.
Georg married a cousin, Caroline. They had a son named Karl.
Eventually Karl married Marie. They had a son named Otto.
Otto married Ottonie and Erika was born.
Erika married Joachim and they had a daughter named Karin.
Karin married Friedrich Wilhelm von Althen, a German immigrant working with the Canadian Forest Service. In1960 she joined him in Sault Ste. Marie, where they raised their five children.
In the mid-1990s, Karin von Althen received a book in the mail from her mother in Germany. It was the published diary of Baroness von Riedesel, recounting her time in North America and the Christmas of1781. Her mother included a sort of family tree explaining how von Althen was related to the baroness.
She thought it was just an exciting story about a distant relative, until she helped her youngest child with a school project on the von Riedesels’ adventure in colonial North America and happened upon the Christmas tree story.
If the von Riedesel tale is not well known, it’s not because of anyone in Sorel. For decades, the town had been receiving visiting descendants of the family, who have been welcomed like royalty.
In 1966, a commemorative plaque was installed outside the home in which the von Riedesels lived — a building now known as Maison des gouverneurs for having housed several governors general in the early 1800s. Shortly after, Sorel received a large framed line drawing from “the noble von Riedesel family” depicting that special evening in 1781.
Canada Post marked the bicentenary of Sorel’s Christmas tree claim in1981with a commemorative stamp.
Perhaps it was this 15-cent flash of national attention that sparked the grand ambitions that seized Sorel in 1986: a four-day festival to celebrate the German tradition that was spawned in this most French-Canadian of towns.
Planned for months, it opened with von Riedesel impersonators in period clothing and shiny wigs leading a tree-lighting ceremony.
Moustachioed men in historically accurate blue-and-white uniforms and muskets over their shoulders portrayed von Riedesel’s German troops while the costumed couple visited schools, hospitals and churches, led a parade and hosted a community banquet. People dressed in colonial-era gear, the likes of which would have graced Sorel’s muddy roads in 1781.
There was German food and drink, German music and even a troop of Torontobased German soldiers who came to visit a town better known for its heavy industry, where massive container ships pass by on their way to and from the ocean, and where just 320 of the 36,000 inhabitants claim German origins, according to the 2016 census.
In those four days, someone probably heard the song that was created for “Dezemberfest,” as the festival was known. Lost to a generation of lips but preserved in the city’s archives, it sings of Sorel’s pride at being the first to have erected “a modest tree that shines across the country.”
Organizers were left feeling a little disappointed by the participation of German Canadians and German diplomats in Montreal.
“Maybe they didn’t take us seriously,” organizers wrote in a post-event report.
Maybe they were right not to. A few years later, Dezemberfest was discontinued. But not everyone’s enthusiasm died.
In August 2016, Karin von Althen made a bucket-list road trip to Sorel with her reluctant son, Peter.
“I had planned it for years and years and years,” she said. “It was just the way I thought it would be.”
Peter, who used to roll his eyes when his mother recounted the Christmas tree story every year, was, to his great surprise, touched by the visit.
Today, he is met with the rolling eyes of his own teenage son when he makes mention of the boy’s great-great-greatgreat-great-grandparents and the family tradition now celebrated across Canada.
“That’s what it is for me,” he said. “It’s just about connection.”
“Every Christmas, everybody has to listen to this story.” KARIN VON ALTHEN