Every major holiday has its classic color scheme. Valentine’s Day is red and pink. Easter is pastel colors. Halloween is orange and black. Thanksgiving is Earth tones. And for hundreds of years, red and green have been the traditional colors of Christmas.
I don’t personally like the red and green combo. Because I’m red/green colorblind, I see the two differently than the average bear, especially when they are beside each other. But per the color theory, these two shades are naturally complementary. And ubiquitous this time of year, as nothing signifies Christmas like these two hues.
And, until now, it never occurred to me to wonder why. So I did a little research. It seems that the history of how red and green came to symbolize Christmas is a lot like the holiday itself: rooted in the Wisdom Traditions, modernized by commercialism, and carried on because we just really like it.
The history of the red/green color combo has ancient historical roots. Romans and Celtic people revered the red- and green-evergreen holly plants and so brought holly in their dwellings on the Winter Solstice to remind them that color would return to the Earth. This tradition would eventually turn into what we think of as decking the halls.
A few hundred years later, the Christians would borrow this tradition, tweaking it slightly. Some scholars say these two colors represent the leaves and holly berries that made up the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head on the cross. Other Christian scholars trace the color combo back to the Miracle Plays of the 14th century. During the holidays, churches would present religious plays to educate the mostly illiterate public. One Miracle Play told the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But apple trees are barren in winter, so the actors brought in pine trees and hung red apples from the branches to represent the Tree of Good and Evil. Over time, people began duplicating the practice at home. And the red and green Christmas Tree was born.
In the 17th century, Franciscan monks used poinsettias in their Nativity processions, sharing the legend of Pepita and the Holy Flower. According to their tale, a poor girl named Pepita went to the town chapel to see the Nativity scene. She wanted to bring a gift to the Baby Jesus, so she picked some weeds. As she laid the weeds on the hearth, they transformed into a beautiful poinsettia, or “Flowers of the Holy Night.”
But the two colors weren’t truly cemented in the collective cultural consciousness until 1936, When Coca-Cola hired illustrator Haddon Sundblom to bring Santa Claus to life in their holiday advertisements. Sundblom studied Victorian Christmas cards, where Santa was tall, thin, and almost always wearing a blue robe. Sundblom drew his Santa as fatter and jollier than those cards and switched the robe to the same shade of red as the Coca-Cola logo. The advertisement was bordered in green. The advertisement was incredibly popular; Sundblom would continue drawing Coke’s Santa until 1964 and his version of Santa remains the most recognizable world-wide.
So this exact color combo is a little historical tradition and a little modern commercialism. How do you feel about it?
