The world's first Christmas tree

Tallinn carries an honour few cities in the world share: here, on the Town Hall Square, stood in 1441 a tree held to be the world's first public Christmas tree. Riga (1510) contests the honour, and scholars still argue over the sources — but of the two records, Tallinn's is the older.

The Brotherhood of Blackheads and 1441

At the centre of the story is the Brotherhood of Blackheads — a guild of unmarried merchants active in medieval Tallinn (then Reval). The brotherhood's account book holds an entry from December 1441: a payment for carrying the tree. By tradition, the Blackheads decorated a tree at their brotherhood house for the feast, and on the last evening the spruce was carried ceremonially to the Town Hall Square, where the brothers danced around it with the townsfolk — and finally the tree was burned.

Tallinn or Riga?

Riga, too, claims to be the city of the world's first Christmas tree: its Town Hall Square holds a memorial stone in eight languages bearing the year 1510 — and there as well the actor was the same Brotherhood of Blackheads, which was active in both cities. By Riga's guild books, its “tree” may in fact have been a tree-shaped wooden candelabrum decorated with dried flowers, fruit and straw ornaments; Tallinn's 1441 feast, by contrast, involved a real spruce. The two cities keep up the friendly dispute to this day — and both have turned it into a pearl of Christmas tourism.

What historians say

An honest picture of the sources: some historians back each city, while sceptics point out that neither city's medieval entries describe a “Christmas tree” in the modern sense — the account book says only that a tree was carried and a feast was held. Tallinn's 1441 entry is in any case the older of the two claims — the oldest known record of its kind of a public festive tree on a European town square. The broader spread of the Christmas-tree custom began centuries later from Germany — but the oldest roots of the story lead to the Baltic shore, to Tallinn.

The tradition today

Today a grand spruce stands every winter on Tallinn's Town Hall Square amid a Christmas market that has been voted Europe's finest — the city carrying on, unbroken, the same custom its merchants paid for back in 1441. See also another story of Estonia's trace in world culture: Tchaikovsky and Estonia.