Christmas trivia

I don't know why I've never thought of this before, but as I was putting up my Christmas tree I thought "why tree?"  I couldn't think of any particular connection between trees and Christmas, but then just the other day it came to me - it's the druids, isn't it?  To them, trees were sacred objects, and the early church, who had this habit of piggy-backing Christian ideas on to local customs, simply picked up on the idea for their own purposes.  It is said that Martin Luther was the first person to light a tree with candles and the Christmas tree tradition here really took off in the Victorian era thanks to Prince Albert. Christmas crackers by the way, seem to be a purely British (and by extension Commonwealth) thing. They originated when a London shopkeeper started selling sweets wrapped in a twist of paper back in the 19th century, and developed from that.