Holiday Evergreens 2010 Forever Stamps — Ponderosa Pine and Others, Booklet Issue

The Ponderosa pine

Named for its ponderous size, with stout, open branching and needle retention good enough to survive a month indoors. Outside of December it has been cut for railroad ties, telegraph poles and furniture veneer, and it is the official tree of Montana.

How trees got into the house

Pagans brought evergreens indoors during winter festivals to represent their idols, hanging apples and other fruit on the branches as offerings to the tree. A number of historians trace the practice of putting gifts beneath a Christmas tree back to exactly that.

Homesick Hessian soldiers are credited with bringing the Christmas tree to the American Colonies during the Revolutionary War. It spread quickly as German immigrants settled across the country through the 1800s.

Rockefeller Center

In 1931, workers building Rockefeller Center decorated a small tree on Christmas Eve with strings of cranberries, paper garlands and a few tin cans. A tree has gone up on that site every year since, and lighting it is now New York's unofficial declaration that the season has started.

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