Pie

You can hardly find a Thanksgiving meal without its most iconic dessert: pie. Whether your family is on team apple, team blueberry, team key lime, or team cherry (we could go on) it’s hard to imagine a Thanksgiving meal feeling complete without one. You may even wonder–how could people live in a world without pie? No? Just us? Well, luckily we haven’t really had to. The origins of pie date all the way back to Ancient Greece when they created the pastry shell by combining flour and water. It made its way through Rome and medieval England all the way down through history until finally landing on our dinner tables. You may be surprised to learn, however, that dessert pie wasn’t served at the original Thanksgiving celebration in 1691. At this time, only the English version of pie had made its way to American which was primarily meat-based. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that dessert pie began appearing on American dinner plates.

Mashed Potatoes

Another big staple of Thanksgiving dinner (and, let’s be honest, the one we most look forward to breaking our diets for) are mashed potatoes. They started out with a bit of a tumultuous history, even once being banned in France because of the fear that vegetables would cause leprosy… yikes. But let’s fast forward to 1887 where the world got its first glimpse into the more automated world of potato mashing. Inventors Jacob Fitzgerald and William H. Silver applied for a patent for the ‘potato-masher and fruit-crusher’ which was designed to crush the potato through a series of small holes, similar to a garlic press. This version was a vast improvement on simply crushing the potatoes on your own as it produced a smoother and more buttery soft potato.

Tinsel

There’s nothing quite like the way tinsel shines among the lights on our Christmas trees. You may be surprised to learn, however, when Tinsel first became a Christmas decoration in the early 1600s it was made of genuine silver which was shredded into thin slivers. There were a few problems with this at the time. The first was that silver eventually tarnishes so you’d only achieve that magnetic shine for a limited amount of time. The second was that, as you could likely guess, silver is expensive so it could only be afforded as a decoration by the very wealthy. This led to the invention of the artificial garland we know today which is typically made of plastic and comes in a variety of festive colors.

Elf on the Shelf

You’ve likely seen this one circulating around quite a bit and there’s a good reason for that- it’s a fairly recent tradition. It derives from a book by the same title written in 2004 by author Carol Aebersold and her daughter Bell Chanda. The book tells the story of how Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice because elves will visit children between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. The book reached the bestseller list in 2013 and the plot has caused the tradition we often see of parents photographing these elves hiding or being caught in precarious scenarios.

Gingerbread House

When it comes to the origins of Gingerbread houses, fact and fantasy tend to intertwine. People often attribute the creation of Gingerbread Houses to The Brothers Grimm. The famed fairy tale writers wrote the famous story of Hansel and Gretel in the early 19th century and, suddenly, Gingerbread houses were everywhere and eventually became the Christmas tradition we look forward to every year. But did these fiction writers invent the Gingerbread house? It’s a great story, but it’s sadly false. Gingerbread houses had already been around since the 1600s, a few centuries after Gingerbread cookies were invented. There were even Gingerbread fairs in England and France throughout the middle ages. Though we may not know the original architect of these structures, the Grimm Brothers fairy tale was responsible for popularizing the art, and we can thank them for one of our favorite (and messiest) holiday activities.

Nutcracker

The earliest forms of the Nutcracker started in 15th and 16th century France and England. Though woodworkers were creating intricate designs, they were far from the colorful soldiers that are now a staple of the Christmas season. Standing wooden nutcrackers in the form of soldiers and kings were shown in the Sonnenberg and Erzgebirge regions of Germany by 1800 and 1830 and the term “Nussknacker” appeared in the dictionary of the Brothers Grimm. In 1872 Wilhelm Fuchtner, known as the father of the Nutcracker, made the first commercial production of nutcrackers using the lathe to create many of the same design. Now they’ve gone from being a functional woodworking piece to a colorful Christmas tradition!

The post Holiday Inventions: Thanksgiving & Christmas appeared first on Inventionland.

STRING LIGHTS

While they might be a hassle to get untangled, prior to their release, people would decorate their trees with live candles. As you can imagine, this was actually pretty dangerous, so Edward Johnson sought to create a safer alternative. Johnson, the protégé of Thomas Edison, debuted his electric Christmas lights to the public in the late 1800s and the tradition of wrestling with them each year has persisted ever since.

GIFT CARDS

These popular stocking stuffers and gifts from relatives you don’t really speak with first debuted in 1998. Nancy Gensburg and Carol Jacobsohn of Swift Gifts in Illinois combined the magic of modern credit cards with store-specific gift certificates and gift cards were born. They were an instant hit and now most retailers have some version of a gift card.

YULE LOGS

Few people burn actual yule logs anymore. The tradition started as a pagan ritual to celebrate the winter solstice, usually burning pine, birch, oak, or aspen (with each type of wood having a different meaning). The modern equivalent is the yule log cake or “Buche de Noel.”  A chocolate sponge cake is rolled around cream and decorated to look like a traditional yule log. It was first created by a French pastry chef in the late 1880s.

THE DREIDEL

Before becoming the game of choice at Hanukah gatherings, the dreidel started as a top popular in Germany during Christmastime. The Jewish community soon adopted the toy, changing the letters on the top from German to Yiddish. Some stories also suggest that they were used as a cover-up after illegally reading the Torah while hiding from the Seleucids.

CANDY CANES

White sugar candy sticks were popular treats, but in 1670 the choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral decided to bend them to look like shepherd’s crooks. They were handed out to children to keep them quiet during services. It wasn’t until the 1900s that the peppermint flavor and iconic red stripes were added, making them the wintertime snack we all know and love.

GREETING CARDS

Surprisingly, Hallmark had nothing to do with the first Christmas card, although they did help popularize them years later. The first card was designed in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole and his friend, artist John Horsley. The inscription was a simple “A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” Believe it or not, the card was actually quite controversial because it included an image of a child being given a glass of wine. But one controversial card didn’t stop this fad. Today, thanks to sites like Shutterfly, many families send out personalize cards with family photos so you can see just how much everyone has grown in the last year.

WRAPPING PAPER

We have Hallmark to thank for wrapping paper, naturally. People traditionally wrapped their presents in fabric or plain papers, but the Kansas City, Missouri Hall Brothers store ran out of the latter one day in 1917. They started offering patterned envelope liners as an alternative. Shoppers loved it and gift wrap hasn’t been the same since. Today, you can find gift wrap decorated with everything from donuts to dinosaurs, and it’s become an art to match the gift wrap with the receiver’s personality.

ARTIFICIAL CHRISTMAS TREES

While going out as a family to pick out the perfect Christmas tree is considered iconic, nowadays many pull the artificial one from the basement. Early artificial trees were made in Germany out of wire covered in green-dyed feathers. In the 1930s, the plastic tree most are familiar with was introduced by Addis, a toilet brush company and the first trees were made out of, you guessed it–toilet brush bristles. We’ve come a long way since then and now you can get trees pre-lit, snow covered and in all colors of the rainbow.

The post Invention Spotlight: Holiday Inventions appeared first on Inventionland.