It’s no secret that Philadelphia is chock full of history. What you may not know, though, is that the Philly area has also been a key player in the history of a few commonplace holiday symbols and customs.
The local connections to the widespread Christmas and Hanukkah traditions span from the 1820s to the 1970s, and range from horticultural to musical.
Read on to learn how some familiar Philly-area places gave rise to some recognizable signs of the holidays, including a plant, a song, a sled, and two types of public ceremonies.
Bartram’s Garden: Early cultivation of the poinsettia in the U.S.
The poinsettia, a bright red flower native to Mexico and Central America, has a reputation as a Christmas plant.
The association between the plant and the holiday can be traced all the way back to the 16th century. Still, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the plant became a Christmas symbol in the United States — and Philadelphia had a role to play in that.
Joel Roberts Poinsett, U.S. ambassador to Mexico and an amateur botanist, took a liking to the vibrant flowers in 1828. Many accounts tell of him sending clippings to his home in South Carolina, but he also apparently sent them to Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, along with some other plants native to Mexico.
In summer 1829, the flower was exhibited at the first-ever Philadelphia Flower Show — the annual exhibition that the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society still holds — and wowed the crowds. Slowly over time, the flower took hold and became more popular in the U.S. and eventually became a bestselling plant around the holidays.
Per an account from former Bartram’s Garden curator Joel Fry, it’s also thought that the first successful poinsettia plants introduced to the UK and Europe may have come from Bartram’s Garden.
Rittenhouse Square: Birthplace of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’
Yes, a classic Christmas carol was born right here in Philadelphia.
Phillip Brooks, an Episcopal priest who was born in Boston but moved to Philly in 1859, wrote the lyrics to “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in 1868, when he was the rector at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square (and no, before you ask, he wasn’t writing about Bethlehem, Pa.).
It started out as a poem for the children in his Sunday school class. Brooks apparently made a pilgrimage to Europe and some biblical sites in the years following the Civil War, and his journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem happened on Christmas Eve. That experience inspired him to write the lyrics a few years later.
Lewis Redner, the church’s organist, set Brooks’ poem to music. The song was first performed at the Holy Trinity around Christmas 1869, according to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. It later appeared in a hymnal in 1871, and it’s lived on ever since.
Independence Mall: Site of the first public menorah lighting
Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, a local leader in the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and four other men are thought to be the first people to ever light a Hanukkah menorah on public property. It happened about five decades ago in 1974.
The wooden menorah was four feet tall and lit in front of Independence Hall. The ceremony was informal: “a private event in public,” Shemtov later told the Inquirer in 2014. “But even so, in concept we were sharing the thing with the world,” he added.
The idea of public menorah lighting ceremonies caught on, and over the years since then, have become much more commonplace. Five years after Shemtov’s Independence Hall ceremony, President Jimmy Carter lit a menorah on the Ellipse, the lawn south of the White House. Today, there’s a National Menorah there that’s lit every year.
Nearby places with holiday history ties
Cinnaminson, New Jersey: Testing ground for the Flexible Flyer sled
This isn’t reeeeally a contribution to how the holidays are celebrated, but more so a contribution to general wintertime fun. (At least it is when there’s snow, which has not been the case in Philly for two years.)
Anyway, the practice of sledding dates back centuries. But Samuel Leeds Allen, a Philly-born businessman who lived across the river in Jersey, is credited with an innovation that offered sledders more control over their direction.
In 1889, he patented the Flexible Flyer, a steerable sled that allowed its rider to maneuver beyond just a straight line. He’d tested prototypes with local kids and adults near his home in Cinnaminson. The sleds weren’t an immediate success, but they ended up being further improved upon and selling well a few decades later.
Perkasie, Bucks County: Host of the oldest tree-lighting ceremony in the U.S.
Perkasie hosted its 115th Christmas tree lighting on Dec. 2, and the Bucks County borough claims to have the oldest in the country, a mantle that U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick read into the congressional record in 2015.
The inaugural community event in 1909 involved Santa gifting 200 children presents from a horse-drawn sleigh, The Inquirer reported in 2016, in an effort to help families experiencing need. Perkasie’s tree lighting ceremony this year featured such things as antique wagon rides, a jazz performance, store window dioramas, alpacas, a nativity photo op, and an appearance from Buddy the Elf.
The custom of lighting Christmas trees goes way, way back to when people used to put light candles in their trees at home. Public ceremonies, though, weren’t as much of a thing. Those got started a little bit before electric string lights started becoming more accessible and affordable. (Electric string lights, by the way, were an invention of Chester County-born and Philly-raised Edward H. Johnson.)
Perkasie’s second-ever tree lighting (in 1910) used electric lights, and the first lighting at NYC’s Madison Square Park in 1912 did as well. The first National Christmas Tree lighting south of the White House came in 1923, under President Calvin Coolidge.
