Oh Christmas Tree!

A Reading AZ Shared Reading Book Oh

Christmas
Word Count: 663

Tree!
Home Connection: Prefix re-
Your reader is learning about the prefix
re-, as in the words rethink and redo. As
you read the book together, have your
reader look for words that start with
re-. Help your reader write a list of the
words that start with re-. Then, ask your
reader to make up a sentence that uses
one of these words. Ask your reader to
write the sentence on the paper with the
word list, then have him or her bring the
paper to school to share with the class.

Written by Lori Mortensen

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 Oh
Photo Credits:
Front cover, back cover: Michael DeYoung/Corbis; title page: teo73/iStock/
Thinkstock; page 3: Plus69/iStock/Thinkstock; page 4: Redlink Production/Corbis;
page 5: Richard T. Nowitz/Corbis; page 6 (main): Serg_Velusceac/iStock/
Thinkstock; page 6 (inset): The Granger Collection, NYC; page 7: North Wind
Picture Archives/Alamy; page 8: Bodo Marks/dpa/Corbis; page 9 (main): Greg

Christmas
Henry/iStock/Thinkstock; page 9 (inset): Hurewitz Creative/Corbis; page 10 (top
left): Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy; page 10 (bottom right): The
Story of the Christmas Tree, Doughty, C.L. (1913-85)/Private Collection/ Look and
Learn/Bridgeman Images; page 11: Bettmann/Corbis; page 12 (main): REX USA;
page 12 (inset): Oscar White/Corbis; page 13: Mary Evans Picture Library/TAH
Collection; page 14: Devonyu/iStock/Thinkstock; page 15: Southwest UK Imaging/

Tree!
Alamy; page 16: Carsten Rehder/dpa/Corbis; page 17: REUTERS/Thomas Peter;
page 18: Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Thinkstock; page 19: Rob Lewine/Tetra Images/
Corbis; background (used throughout): iStock/Olga Yakovenko

Oh Christmas Tree!
Shared Reading Book
Level 3
Learning AZ
Written by Lori Mortensen Written by Lori Mortensen

All rights reserved.

www.readinga-z.com www.readinga-z.com
Contents Introduction
Introduction............................... 4 Its big.
Evergreen.................................. 6 Its green.
A Queens Christmas...................10 Each year, people set it up in their
homes and decorate it with shiny
An Absurd Fad........................13
ornaments, tinsel, and strings of
Christmas Tree Farms.................15 bright lights.
Glossary.................................. 20

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 Evergreen
The Sun begins each day and ends
each day. As it moves across the sky,
it provides light and warmth. Long
ago, ancient people worshipped the
Sun. It seemed to look down like a
powerful unblinking eye.

Of course, its a Christmas tree!

As the holiday season approaches,
these trees pop up all over the place.
But did you know that many years
ago there were no Christmas trees? Five hundred years ago, the Incas
of South America worshipped Inti,
How did this tradition get started? the Sun god.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 During the sixteenth century,
German Christians brought evergreen
trees into their homes. Later,
they decorated them with candles.
Then on Christmas Eve, they lit
the candles. The candles filled the
room with warm, flickering light.
In time, German people migrated
to America and brought this custom
with them.
St. Nicholas was a kind
monk born in AD 270.
Centuries later, both he
and evergreen boughs
became associated with
Christmasand each other
as in this piece of art.

During the winter, however, the days

became cold and gray. Nights were
long and dreary. To cheer themselves
up, people decorated their homes
with boughs from trees that stayed
green all year. The evergreen boughs
reminded everyone that the Suns
warm light would return.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 O Christmas A Queens Christmas
Tree is the name Queen Victoria
of an old German of England made
Christmas carol. Christmas trees
more popular
O Christmas tree, than ever. She was
O Christmas tree, married to Prince
Albert, a man from
Your branches green Germany.
delight us. One Christmas, she encouraged him
Theyre green when to decorate a Christmas tree like the
summer days are bright; ones he had enjoyed as a boy. The
prince eagerly agreed. He decorated
Theyre green when winter the tree with
snow is white. sweets, wax
O Christmas tree, dolls, strings
of almonds, and
O Christmas tree, candles. At the
Your branches green very top, he
delight us! placed an angel.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 In the United States, one in every
five American families had their
own Christmas tree by 1900. Today,
about 100 million Christmas trees
go on display around the world each
holiday season.

A White House
Christmas
In 1889, the first
Christmas tree was
set up in the White
House. It was
for the family of
President Benjamin
Harrison. He was
the twenty-third
In 1848, an illustration of the queens
president of the
family gathered around the tree
United States.
appeared in the London news. When
everyone saw the beautiful tree in the
newspaper, they wanted a Christmas
tree just like the queens.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
An Absurd Fad
People used to go to the woods and cut
down evergreens for their Christmas
trees. In the early 1900s, people were
cutting down so many trees that the
forests began to disappear.
Many people spoke out against
the destruction. In the early
1900s, newspapers reported that
President Theodore Roosevelt
banned Christmas trees from the
White House. In 1902, editors at the
Hartford Courant spoke out against
cutting down trees for decoration:
The green has become a nuisance . . .
Everything . . . has to be decorated.
The result is that the woods are being
stripped . . . just to meet the calls of
an absurd fad.
Around the same time, the first
Christmas tree farm opened in New
Jersey. People could buy a Christmas
tree grown on the farm instead of
chopping one down in the woods.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 When the trees are about 6 to 7
feet (2 m) tall, the trees are ready.
Before they are sold, the farmer
shears the trees to give them the
familiar Christmas tree shape.
In the United States, 25 to 30 million
real Christmas trees are sold each
holiday season.

Christmas Tree Farms

Today, Christmas tree farms are a
big business. In 2012, U.S. farmers
planted 46 million Christmas trees.
Farmers plant about 2,000 trees per
acre. Then they wait for the trees
to grow. It takes about 6 to 10 years
for the trees to mature.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 When the holiday season returns,
Christmas trees will again pop up all
over towns and cities. People will set
them up in their homes and decorate
them with shiny ornaments, tinsel,
and strings of bright lights.

When Christmas is over, many trees

are recycled. People reuse them in
different ways.
Some are ground into mulch and
used in gardens. Sometimes animals
eat them at the zoo. Some people
buy living trees with roots and
replant them after Christmas.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading
 Glossary
banned (v.) stopped allowing (p. 14)
boughs (n.) branches of a tree that
have leaves or needles
on them (p. 7)
custom (n.) an accepted way of doing
something in a culture (p. 8)
decorate (v.) to make something more
attractive by adding color
or an ornament to it (p. 4)
evergreen (adj.) having leaves that remain
green all year (p. 7)
flickering (v.) shining with a fluttering light;
moving quickly (p. 8)
holiday (n.) a special day of celebration
or remembering (p. 5)

As people gather around the mature (v.) to become grown or fully
developed (p. 15)
sparkling tree, it will cheer them
just like the evergreen boughs tinsel (n.) thin strips or threads of
shiny metal foil (p. 4)
of old. Someone might even start
singing O Christmas Tree, the
words of the old German carol.

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Oh Christmas Tree! | Shared Reading