Archive
Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Company: Quality Artificial Trees Featuring True Needle Foliage
Festively Adorned Balsam Hill Christmas Trees Impart a Touch of Festive Warmth
Through its Aspen, Napa, and Vermont Signature Collections, Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co. offers a variety of realistic artificial trees spanning geographical regions of the U.S. Balsam Hill utilizes exclusive True Needle technology, making its Christmas trees the most lifelike on the market. The innovative True Needle injection-molded PE plastic manufacturing process effectively mimics the form, color, and even the texture of evergreen needles. True to the appearance of actual tree branches, Balsam Hill’s True Needle artificial trees are crafted with color variations within different parts of the branch and foliage. Pine needles often start off dark green close to the branch and fade to a lighter hue at their tips.
Balsam Hill in-house designers model True Needle branches taking into consideration the natural asymmetries of all real trees. The combination of all these carefully considered details creates an overall impression of lifelikeness, such that guests may not realize that the tree in the living room is not the real thing. Balsam Hill’s passion for Christmas trees is serious: unlike many other distributors it focuses solely on its own exclusively designed trees. The company oversees the highest production quality standards, ensuring that Balsam Hill Christmas trees will provide holiday cheer for years to come. Realizing that its customers have a variety of living arrangements, the company offers a full range of tree sizes that suit any home environment.
Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co. artificial trees are available in heights from four eighteen feet, and the company offers customized widths. We even manufacture the Fifth Avenue Flatback as a tree specifically designed to accommodate the limited space requirements of apartments and studios. With the Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co.’s wide selection of lights, ornaments, tree skirts, wreaths, and Christmas stockings, customers fulfill all their Christmas decorative shopping needs in one location. For more information, visit the Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co. online at www.balsamhill.com or call (888) 552-2572.
The Origin of the Christmas Tree
By: Balsam Hill Christmas Trees
In the seventh century, a monk named St. Boniface traveled from England to Germany in order to share his religion and build a more inclusive Christian community. During his travels, he spent a significant amount of time in Thuringia, where he used the shape of native fir trees to explain the trinity of God. Using the fir’s triangular shape, St. Boniface elucidated the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of which are considered parts of God in the Christian tradition. The Germans began celebrating the fir as a symbol of Christianity, especially during religious holidays. The tree became expressly entwined with Christmas during the 1100s, when households would hang small trees upside down from the ceiling as a representation of God’s presence. Central Europeans began decorating trees in the early 1500s; the earliest documented decorated tree was erected in Riga, Latvia, in 1510. Around the same time, Martin Luther reportedly began decorating a small Christmas tree with candles.
In Germany, annual Christmas markets that sold food, gifts, and decorations, including ornaments for Christmas trees, sprang up in several towns in the mid-1500s. Most early ornaments were wax souvenirs from the market. In 1601, a visitor to Strasbourg described wafers, barley sugar strands, and paper flowers being used as other decorations. Since many began to view the Christmas tree as a representation of the Garden of Eden, red and white flowers denoted knowledge and innocence, respectively. Food items symbolized the garden’s abundance. Shortly thereafter, tinsel became an essential part of Christmas decoration. Machines pulled real silver into thin strips that wrapped around the tree. Since silver tarnished easily, some experimented with silver and lead mixtures, but these forms of tinsel proved too heavy. Tinsel makers continued to use real silver until the 1900s, when they switched to newly engineered materials that proved cheaper and more durable.
Balsam Hill Christmas Trees: The Vermont Signature Christmas Tree Collection
Known for creating highly realistic artificial Christmas trees, Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Company offers several geographically distinct collections: the Aspen Christmas Signature Christmas Tree Collection, the Napa Christmas Signature Collection, the Smoky Mountain Christmas Signature Collection, and the Vermont Signature Christmas Tree Collection.
Every tree in Balsam Hill’s Signature collections features the company’s trademarked True Needle branches, which provide an unmatched level of realism in both feel and appearance. In addition to trees, the Balsam Hill Signature collections also contain garlands and wreaths designed to complement the trees in each collection.
The Vermont Signature Christmas Tree Collection from Balsam Hill offers realistic renditions of trees native to New England and the East Coast. The collection includes the Norway Spruce, the Balsam Fir, and the Red Spruce Slim. Featuring a classic Christmas tree shape and impressive green color, the Norway Spruce is a careful recreation of one of America’s most popular live trees. Updated to include more True Needle branches and additional realistic touches, the Norway Spruce contains steel-reinforced branches, which ensure reliable support for treasured ornaments. The Norway Spruce is available with clear lights, Candlelight LED lights, or Color+Clear lights.
Chosen as the “Best Overall” artificial Christmas tree by Good Housekeeping Magazine, Balsam Hill’s Balsam Fir is a faithful reproduction of its namesake tree. The Balsam Fir features realistic brown stems, upward-sloping branches, and needle shapes based on cuttings taken from live trees. Offered with clear or Color+Clear lights, the Balsam Fir provides the aesthetic value of a live balsam fir without the sap, dry needles, or other inconveniences of a cut tree.
Based on Picea rubens found in the east from Vermont to North Carolina, the Red Spruce Slim Christmas tree from Balsam Hill provides a solution for those in need of a narrower tree. The Red Spruce Slim has long, multi-pronged branches that allow for placement of many ornaments despite the tree’s smaller profile.
Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co: Christmas Tree Facts and Trivia
Christmas trees have come to represent the holiday season. Adorning the fronts of Christmas cards, living rooms across America, town centers, and homey Christmas scenes painted by many artists, the Christmas tree symbolizes home, hearth, and the warmth of the holidays. How much do you know about Christmas trees? Leading manufacturer of artificial trees, Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co. offers the following Christmas tree trivia.
1. The earliest Christmas trees appeared in Germany in about 672 BCE.
2. Christmas trees became commercially available in the United States in 1850.
3. The first White House Christmas tree appeared in 1856, placed there by President Franklin Pierce.
4. The first national Christmas tree lighting ceremony occurred on the White House lawn in 1923 during the Coolidge administration.
5. In 1882, Thomas Edison’s assistant, Edward Johnson, had the idea of placing strings of lights on Christmas trees. The idea led to mass production in 1890.
6. The Theodore Roosevelt administration banned Christmas trees in the White House for environmental reasons.
7. First made in Germany in the 17th Century, tinsel was made of real strips of silver. Early American tinsel contained lead, and the United States government banned it. Now, it is made of plastic.
8. The first artificial Christmas trees appeared in Germany around the turn of the 20th Century. Those trees contained metal wire covered with dyed green feathers.
9. In 1930, Addis Brush Company created brush-style Christmas trees using the same machines that made their other products.
10. More than 48 percent of American homes decorate an artificial Christmas tree every year.
Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Company: Decorating Tips
For many, decorating for Christmas provides a profound sense of joy and satisfaction. As a leading manufacturer of artificial Christmas trees, Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Co. offers the following ideas for decorating your Christmas tree.
1. Make it a family tradition. During a busy time, connecting with your family becomes even more important. Schedule a time each holiday season where your family gathers to decorate your tree.
2. Use meaningful ornaments. Every year, allow each member of your family to select a new ornament that represents a special interest. Each year when you decorate the tree, allow everyone to place individual ornaments. As the years progress, your tree becomes a living record of how your family has grown.
3. Select a theme. If you prefer a themed Christmas tree to a hodgepodge of mismatched ornaments, then choose your theme. It might center on a specific color scheme, or you may wish to choose ornaments of a similar nature, such as the nativity, the beach, or something else.
4. Go homemade. If you enjoy crafts, then you may like decorating your tree with ornaments you have created.
5. Create a travelogue. If you travel regularly, then decorate your tree with treasures found from the locations you visit.
6. Be glamorous. Decorate your tree in two colors, such as burgundy and gold or blue and silver, using bows, ribbons, and glittering balls in your theme or color.
Some rights reserved by Jo Naylor
Balsam Hill Christmas Tree's Blog 