The Christmas pickle is an American story

A wood engraving of a mother lifting a small child toward a tall candlelit tree hung with ornaments, while an older child reaches up. — The Christmas Tree, wood engraving by John Whetton Ehninger, Harper’s Bazaar, 1870. Public domain. Credits

When it is kept: Christmas Eve and morning
Where it fits in the year: All through the season

The custom is a game. A glass pickle ornament is hidden in the tree, and the first person to spot it on Christmas morning is said to win an extra gift or a year of good luck.^1,2

Many people say the pickle is an old German custom. Historians say that idea is not supported. It looks like a German-American tradition that began in the late 1800s or later.^1,3 A 2016 poll of 2,057 Germans found that 91 percent had never heard of it.¹

The best-documented link is that Woolworth stores sold German-made glass ornaments. F. W. Woolworth began buying them in 1880 or 1890; accounts differ.^4,1 Nothing found shows that a pickle story went with those ornaments. The oldest printed mentions found so far are newspaper stories from 1998 and 1999.¹

The town of Berrien Springs, Michigan, called itself the Christmas Pickle Capital of the World and held a pickle festival and parade in the 1990s.^5,6,1 The title was a festival theme. It does not show where the custom began.⁵

A legend, not history

A story says a Civil War prisoner named John C. Lower was saved from starving by a pickle, and hid a pickle on his tree every year after that. No document is offered for it, and the company that tells the tale calls it a legend. The telling changes from one version to the next.^1,3,7

Sources