Published: 10 December 2025
A British Beginning
Every December, Britain’s Christmas trees glitter with a familiar combination of baubles and tinsel. They’re so embedded in our festive imagination that it’s easy to forget they’re relatively recent arrivals in the long history of Christmas traditions—and that their journey to British living rooms spans several centuries and several countries.
The story begins in the United Kingdom in the early Victorian era, a period that transformed Christmas from a low-key religious festival into the family-centred celebration we recognise today. When Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria and born in Germany, introduced the custom of decorating a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in the 1840s, he sparked a cultural revolution. The illustrated image of the royal family gathered around a candle-lit tree, published in the Illustrated London News in 1848, normalised the Christmas tree for British households almost overnight.
The German Glassmakers Behind the First Baubles
At this point, decorations were modest: fruits, nuts, gingerbread shapes, and hand-crafted trinkets. To understand how we got from apples and paper ornaments to shimmering baubles, we need to look to the German glassmaking town of Lauscha, high in the Thuringian Forest. In the mid-16th century, Lauscha became famous for its glassblowers, but it wasn’t until the 1840s—around the same time Queen Victoria’s tree was gaining fame—that local artisans began blowing glass decorations specifically for Christmas trees.
Legend suggests that a glassblower named Hans Greiner crafted the first glass baubles when he couldn’t afford apples to decorate his family tree. Whether or not the tale is apocryphal, what’s certain is that Lauscha exported thousands of these delicate, silvered ornaments across Europe by the 1860s, and by the 1880s they were arriving in Britain.
Transatlantic Influence and British Adoption
The popularity of baubles accelerated dramatically thanks to international trade and a growing appetite for festive novelty. By the early 20th century, America’s Woolworths stores were importing Lauscha-made ornaments in huge volumes, and the craze reverberated back to the UK. After the Second World War, British manufacturers such as Coronation Industries in the Midlands began producing mass-market baubles, bringing the tradition fully into British domestic life.
The Glittering History of Tinsel
Tinsel’s story is equally international—though far older. The very first tinsel emerged not in Britain but in 17th-century Germany, where thin strands of real silver were hammered and sliced to imitate the sparkling effect of icicles on winter trees. Over time, silver tarnished too quickly, so craftsmen experimented with tin and lead, before eventually turning to lightweight, shiny plastics in the 20th century.
Tinsel spread across Europe, and by the time it reached Britain in the Victorian period, it became a symbol of luxury and modernity—its gleaming strands catching the candlelight on early Christmas trees.
A Tradition Rooted in Britain Today
Today, the UK’s Christmas tree traditions—baubles, tinsel, lights, and toppers—are an eclectic blend of global influences filtered through Victorian nostalgia. Yet they’ve become unmistakably British. Every sparkling bauble and every strand of tinsel on a UK Christmas tree carries a little piece of Germany, a dash of transatlantic commerce, and a lot of home-grown festive joy.
You can enjoy the unique history of Holker Hall with a Christmas twist if you join one of our tours, Wednesday to Friday, 11am, 12:30pm and 2pm – right up until we close on Monday 21st December.