Word: firs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...brown frame house with the green picket fence sits amid a clump of fir trees on a hill overlooking the writers' colony of Peredelkino, 15 miles southwest of Moscow. There, in the sparsely furnished second-floor study, Boris Pasternak wrote some of the greatest Russian poetry of the century and Doctor Zhivago, the epic saga of Russian life, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. On a nearby hillock, surrounded by three pine trees, is the grave where Pasternak was buried after his death from cancer in 1960. Since then, the house...
...President will get his favorite sweet potatoes with marshmaUows and even some monkey bread, a thick, spongy concoction he relishes. The White House is laced with vivid red, green, gold and white decorations. There is a giant bunch of mistletoe in the foyer, a 19½-ft. Douglas fir from Spartansburg, Pa., and the gingerbread house in the State Dining Room has a jelly bean path to the door...
...many legends explaining the origins of the modern Christmas tree, three are the most popular. Some scholars trace the "tannenbaum" back to the fir tree erected by Boniface, the 8th-century English missionary known as the Apostle of Germany, in place of a sacred oak of Odin. Others point to the "paradise" trees of knowledge of good and evil, used as stage props in 15th century German Christmas plays...
...bestows the honor on the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. One Christmas Eve, travelling alone through a snow-covered forest, Luther supposedly noticed brilliant stars twinkling among the evergreen trees. The scene made such a deep impression on him, that to recapture it for his family, he cut a small fir tree, dragged it into the nursery and placed lighted candles on the branches...
Whatever its origin, the Christmas tree spread throughout Germany and was brought to America by Hessian troops during the Revolutionary War. But the tree did not gain popularity until the mid-1800's, when a picture of Queen Victoria's elaborate fir appeared in Godey's Lady's Book, the fashionable magazine...