Category: Germany

I confess.  I have a thing for tinsel.  Not just any tinsel, mind you.  I want that wonderful, heavy metal stuff from my childhood, those silvery strands that my father patiently hung on the tree one by one.

What incredible dedication.  And, what a magical sight to behold! Mom certainly did not have time for that!  Taking down the tree was just as time consuming.  Off they came one by one to be carefully flattened and saved for another year.

Tinsel

I know that tinsel or lametta originated in Germany in the early 1600s.  German glassblowers from the Lauscha region crafted crystal ornaments, some looked just like icicles.  When the candles were lit on the tree, oh how those icicles glistened!  As the years passed, craftsmen created icicles from tin and even silver.  By the 1920s, the time when my grandfather Edgar Mitchell was celebrating Christmas in Dayton, Ohio with his wife and children, German craftsmen had invented lametta, tinsel icicles made from lead.  My grandmother’s family was German-speaking.  Perhaps that’s how my father’s love for a Christmas tree dripping in tinsel began.

Later generations have not experienced the magic of tinsel on Christmas morning.  Lead based lametta has been banned from the American market since the 1960s.  The past two Decembers, I’ve walked the aisles of German Christmas markets in search of the real thing.  Sadly, this magical tradition seems to be out of vogue in German households nowadays.  Although we visited markets, stores and flea markets in city after city, sightings of that old-fashioned lametta were few and far between.