City Is Home to One of Oldest Christmas Tree Traditions
By Amy Melissa Kirby | New Britain Historical Society Director at December 18, 2023 | 6:15 pm | Print
It was a cool December day that found Mrs. Elise Traut walking up Arch Street to her home. It was 1912, and while Mrs. Traut did own an automobile, walking was customary, if not preferable to driving on the muddy streets of New Britain. The city was booming – the factories were at their peak, the roads were crowded with automobile and horse-drawn wagons, and the population swelled with immigrant workers. Times were changing and the Progressive m ovement had just begun to take hold. However, there was a stark disparity between the poor working class and those who ran the factories. Mrs. Traut was among the wealthy New Britain socialites of the time, and she used her wealth and social status to help promote better domestic life for the working class. Typical of German immigrants, she was also very devoted to the Christmas traditions.
So it was not so much an unusual scene but a momentous coincidence that Elise Traut happened that day upon five children decorating a shrub outside their tenement. Delighted to see the children celebrating the holiday in this manner, she naturally stopped to commend them. After speaking with them briefly, she then discovered that they could not afford a Christmas Day in their home. While their mother was working, they had decided to decorate the tree in their yard instead.
Now, bear in mind that Mrs. Traut considered herself a professional in the subject of Christmas and domestic life. She was the author of such books as Christmas in Heart and Home; The Little Brauns’ German Christmas: A Christmas Story for Mother and Child; and The American Woman and Her Home Problem. Therefore, this was a considerable event that Traut could never let pass lightly.
The population of this time was often outside, even in the winter. The busy downtown streets brought many people past Central Park, and even in the winter people this was a place to stop and rest or gather for public events. Elise Traut therefore proposed to the city that a municipal Christmas tree be placed in Central Park. Traut generously funded this venture and bequeathed enough money to continue this as a tradition for years to come. This required not only purchasing a cut tree every year, but providing decorations and electric lights.
New Britain is the home of one of the oldest public Christmas tree traditions in the nation, starting the same year as the Rockefeller tree in New York and pre-dating the National Christmas Tree on the White House Lawn by 11 years. Since 1993, the tradition has found another benefactor in Michael Guida, founder of Guida’s Dairy who donated a live tree. While this tree may not survive the current plans to redesign Central Park, it seems likely that New Britain will find a way to continue this historic tradition.
