December 6#: Mitten Tree Day

3 min read

We have all used mittens in our lives.
They are our favorite things to use when making snowballs or making a snowman, as they keep our hands warm.
We are here today to learn about a day that celebrates the gift of warmth, a day to collect mittens, hang them on a Christmas tree, and then hand them out to those in need.

It seems this day was created by teachers as a way to have a fun Christmastime activity for the children to make while they were in school, while others would claim that the holiday was created because of a book with the title not by chance “The Mitten Tree”, written by author Candace Christiansen.
In the book the main character Sarah is bundling up to walk through the cold winter weather, and on her trek she sees a group of children placing their mittens on a small dead tree.
However, newspaper references prove this day began before the book came out.
One newspaper article came out in 1949.
According to the article, children of the Primary Department of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church clipped mittens and gloves to the branches of a Christmas Tree, then turned over to the Lutheran World Service after Christmas and distributed to boys and girls in Europe, where warm clothing was needed.
In the 1950s and 1960s Boy and Girl Scout Troops collected or made mittens to give away at Christmastime, hanging them on trees while, in recent years, Mitten Tree Day events have been held annually on this day, December 6th.

But no matter where the origin for the holiday came from, as children and not only will always enjoy making little mitten trees.
But what about mittens?
Where do they come from?
Well, the word come from the Old French word “mitaine”, an old pet name for a cat, because back then mittens were made of animal fur, and originally were different because they did not have any separate finger openings to allow finger mobility.
Actually they were believed to have been made out of wool due to the discovery of a woolen mitten found in the harbor area of Dorestad in the Netherlands, determined to be from the 8th or 9th century AD based on surrounding archaeological evidence.
What is clear is that mittens have been around for hundreds of years, and those in cold climates made them from fur, animal skin, and whatever other materials could be found to keep the hands warm.
Many believe the oldest mittens come from Latvia and are over 1,000 years old.
But latvians didn’t just use mittens to keep their hands warm: when women married, they were given a hope chest with several pairs of knitted mittens.
The unique patterns on the mittens had specific meanings, with some patterns signified a blessing for their home, while others were used to bless members of their families.
One of the earliest known mittens in the United States dates back to 1803, and it contained a poem knitted into the wool.
During the Civil War, Abby Condon produced hand-knitted mittens for soldiers, and she recruited women from all over New England to help her.
About 1,500 workers produced 15,000 mittens in just one year!
So as you can see, mittens have been a very long history!

Either way, in order to celebrate this holiday, the best thing to do is have a bunch of mittens ready, and set them on our Christmas tree, one per each branch until we either run out of branches to use for holding the mittens, or we run out of mittens to put on the branches of the tree.
And then, when we’re ready, we can take our best set of mittens off the tree and head on out to enjoy the winter!