I recently read something about this event that I hadn’t known before, and I’m a pretty serious military historian. Christmas trees weren’t known in pre-Revolutionary America, or Britain for that matter. The practice is a German custom. The Hessians, in 1776 Trenton, erected a Christmas tree, and it was still there when the American army overran the town and captured the Hessians and their tree. Whether the practice of erecting the Christmas tree was adopted by Americans because of this, I don’t know; but it’s the apparently the earliest Christmas tree anyone has discovered record of, in America.
And yes, Washington’s attack at Trenton is one of the most successful, most improbably victories in military history. Few battles this small have had such large consequences.
