Why is Christmas red and green?

Colors play a very important role in our life, for example, white symbolizes peace, red is the color of love or anger, similarly, special days are also associated with specific colors. If we think about Valentine’s Day then the color that immediately pops up in our heads is red or pink; then for Halloween, it’s orange and black. So, when you think of Christmas what colors come to your mind? Think about its easy! It’s red and green. One can say it is because of the reason that the Christmas tree is green and Santa Clause’s robe is red. Well, that is one way to put it but the actual reason runs deeper than that. Centuries ago the Celtic people celebrated the winter solstice with holly that is a red and green colored plant. Hollies grow throughout the year, they bloom even in the dead winters and for that they also symbolized fertility. From there the hollies snuck into Christmas decorations as well. 

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Another reason that red and green are associated with Christmas is the poinsettia plants. In an old Mexican legend, a girl called Pepita was upset that she didn’t have any gift to leave for baby Jesus at Christmas Eve services. But, her cousin tried to comfort by saying that Jesus would love any gift from her and so she picked a bouquet of weeds on her way to church and left the bouquet at the bottom of the nativity scene. Suddenly, the bouquet of weeds burst into beautiful flowers. Since that day poinsettia flowers became the “Flowers of the Holy Night” or “Flores de Noche Buena”. 

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Haddon Sundblom made the colors permanent when he was hired by Coca-Cola to draw a Santa Claus for the company’s ads. Before that there was no fixed portrayal of Santa, he was usually thin and his robes varied between blue, red and green. Sundblom changed it, he chose to portray Santa as a fat and jolly person wearing a red robe. 

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That red robe with the green fur tree used as Christmas tree unofficially made red and green the official colors of Christmas. With time we too started recognizing and associating red and green with Christmas. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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