As the idea of decorated Christmas trees spread, each country had their own ideas and variations of Christmas ornaments. Americans would use cranberries and popcorn. They then would use small gifts to decorate the trees, or baskets or yarn.

As the popularity of the ornaments grew, children found more and more things to decorate their trees with, and soon you could not see the tree under all the ornaments.

So, the earliest ornaments were simply the loving creations of families and friends. However, in the latter part of the Nineteenth century various German entrepreneurs began to make ornaments that were mass produced and sold strictly as Christmas ornaments. This is where the elaborate ornaments of today really started.

Some of the more famous first Christmas ornaments were started in the area around Lauscha. This area had long been known for its glass making. It became the hub of the glass ornament trade in Germany. Many businesses that before that time made more practical glass items found they could diversify and make glass ornaments as well.

The first glass ornaments were replicas of fruits, nuts and other food items, but just like the homemade ornaments began to branch out, so did the manufactured ones branch out into making hearts, stars, etc.

As glass ornaments got more popular, the glass blowers of Lauscha realized their potential and started creating molds of children, saints, famous people, animals and more. The whole town of Lauscha was an ornament producing factory.

The hype spread and the American mass merchandisers, F.W.Woolworth, began importing German glass ornaments in the 1880s. By 1890, Woolworth was selling $25 million worth of them, and at five and ten cents apiece that is a whole lot of ornaments.

Glass ornaments were not the only ones being made, in another German city, Dresden, artisans were making ornaments out of pressed and embossed paper. The ornaments they made were not just Christmas-themed but included fish, birds and other animals. They were colorful, and because they were diverse people found they could use them for things besides Christmas.

During this same time, tinsel became a popular ornamentation for Christmas trees as well.

So what spurred the popularity of the Christmas ornaments? Well, besides being new, and fun, Queen Victoria, who was dedicated to seeing a resurgence of the Christmas celebration, had an illustration of her family around their Christmas tree in Godey's Lady's Book in December, 1860. This illustration of the queen and her family in front of a decorated tree inspired Americans, British and others around the world to have trees of their own and decorate them.

Many of the ornaments decorating the trees of Victorian households were of the handmade craft variety, but because of their popularity, soon instructions for making ornaments of your own were found in popular magazines.

As ornaments became more popular around the world, the ones you could buy became more and more gaudy. They would have lots of colors, were often imaginative scenes of Santa, and were full of lace, curly wire decoration, beadwork, tinsel and other materials, often on the same ornament.

As the Twentieth century began, Christmas celebrations has become very visible with people decorating homes, and children really getting into the season, which meant that Germany now had some competition in the ornament making business.

One thing of note was that these ornaments, while being produced by the boat load, still had their handcrafted originality, and thus appealed to a wider consumer base. Each ornament was hand crafted, often by people or families who had been in the business of glass or metal for generations, which meant that each ornament had a touch of individual craftsmanship.

With the wars, the face of the ornament industry changed. Businessmen involved in the German ornament trade had a realization that with the war, and with not so great of feelings with Germans, their business of ornament importation could greatly be affected. One business man in particular, Max Eckhardt, could see that his business was going to be in trouble, so in the late 30's he and a representative of F.W.Woolworth, got together to see if they could persuade the Corning Company to make American glass ornaments.

This particular company, found in Corning, New York had a machine that made light bulbs, but when they saw the potential for a larger market and profit, they decided they would see if they could convert the machine to make ornaments instead. They decided to determine how popular these ornaments were, and go from there. The success was phenomenal, not only were they very popular, but because they were using a machine, rather than hand making the ornaments, they were able to produce about 300,000 ornaments a day, compared with the perhaps 600 for a skilled German glassblower. They would make the base, or the glass, then send them to other companies for decoration. Max Eckhardt owned one such company, named Shiny Brite.

The origin of today's ornaments came from many of the ornament innovations of Shiny Brite. Their ornaments were lacquered by machine on the outside and then decorated by hand. After a few years they found that the ornaments would remain "shiny bright" for longer periods if they silvered the insides.

The story is not all happy from here, WWII intervened and material shortages caused even more changes to the ornament decorating industry. Material shortages meant that the company had to decorate the clear glass balls with simple thin stripes in pastel colors, because these did not need as much metallic oxide pigment.

The different shapes of ornaments started to come into play when Corning had to alter its machines to produce a greater variety of shapes and sizes of glass ball without using scarce war material. Thus variety was introduced, not just in color and design, but in shape and size as well.

The main place to buy ornaments and decorations for Christmas trees was still F.W. Woolworth and its competing five-and-dime stores Kresge and Neisner's. However, some specialty stores started to immerge with more complex and varied ornaments. However, because of the Depression, most ornaments were sold in regional chains because they were the only stores with the purchasing power to get the variation of ornaments.

Some of the bigger department stores, like Macy's and Gimbel's and Marshall Field's and Wanamaker's and even The Dixie Store would offer limited collection ornaments, such as one commemorative ornament a year.

Soon it was realized that complexity and variety of ornaments were the driving engines of ornament sales. Thus came the formation of injection molding, instead of simply blowing bubbles out of molten ribbons, to result in shinier more reflective ornaments. Injection molding opened the door to more intricate figures and even whole scenes being made into ornaments. They could be created in plastic and then encased within a pastel-tinted outer shell. One of the most popular Christmas ornaments were mini representations of Movie Stars and popular icons of the day. These sold by the thousands.

The world of Christmas decorations began to grow as ornaments became more and more popular, and soon toy trains surrounding trees, small representations of snow covered villages would line the mantels, and Santa figures would adorn tables.

We can thanks Germany and the World Wars for the ornaments we have today. Their origin was humble, most were handmade, but they grew to be a very large industry bringing in millions of dollars a year and brightening the lives and homes of many who suffered from the effects of the Depression.

If you have the good fortune to own one of the original hand blown glass ornaments from the little city in Germany, then cherish it because it is hard to find ornaments today that are not mass produced.