Christmas Colors Came From Church Paint

Holly has green leaves and red berries. Most people stop there, and the answer feels finished.

It is not finished. The same pairing sat on English church screens six hundred years ago, got revived by Victorian restorers, and ran in an American newspaper 35 years before Coca-Cola painted its first Santa. Here is the fuller story.

Christmas colors are red and green because two separate sources pushed the same pair forward. Winter plants supplied it naturally, holly and later the poinsettia carrying both colors on one branch, and medieval English churches painted rood screens in red and green from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Spike Bucklow of the University of Cambridge proposed in 2011 that Victorian restorers found the coding on those screens and carried it into Christmas. The Coca-Cola story is the weakest link in the chain: an Indianapolis Journal article from 1896 already called red and green "the Christmas colors," 35 years before Coca-Cola's first Santa ad ran.

In this article

• Christmas Colors by the Numbers ↓
• Where Red and Green Came From ↓
• The Plants That Carried Both Colors ↓
• The Part the Plants Do Not Explain ↓
• FAQ ↓

Christmas Colors by the Numbers

Where Red and Green Came From

Christmas colors start with a shortage. A northern European winter strips the color out of everything. Fields go brown, trees go bare, and the light drops for months. Holly keeps its glossy green leaves and pushes out red berries in December. So do ivy, yew and mistletoe. Bringing them indoors was not a symbolic gesture at first. It was the only color on offer.

Christian practice absorbed the habit and gave it meaning. Holly's spined leaves were read as the crown of thorns and the berries as blood, while the evergreen stood for life continuing through the dead part of the year. Both readings are widely repeated in church tradition rather than traceable to one founding document, so they belong in the commonly-told column, not the documented one.

The plant story explains why red and green feel right in December. It does not explain why the two locked together as a fixed, recognizable pair. A pairing needs someone to pair it, and for that part of the trail the evidence runs through paint.

The Plants That Carried Both Colors

Holly Did the Heavy Lifting

Holly is the plant doing the most work in the Christmas color story. It stays green, it fruits in winter, and it carries both colors on a single branch. Midwinter decorating with holly and other evergreens across Europe is well attested. The sharper claim, the one about pre-Christian Celtic peoples hanging holly to ward off spirits, gets repeated everywhere online and rests on thin sourcing, so file it as a commonly told story rather than settled history.

What holds up is the color logic. A holly branch in a dark December room is the brightest object in it. Red against green reads as vivid at low light levels in a way red against brown never does. People noticed long before anyone wrote down why.

The Tree Started as a Stage Prop

The Christmas tree began in the theater. Medieval paradise plays, staged around Christmas Eve, dramatized Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden. The central prop was a paradise tree, a fir hung with apples standing in for the Garden of Eden. Stage directions from a play dated to roughly the 12th century call for several trees on the set.

Germans then set one up at home on December 24, the feast day of Adam and Eve. Red fruit on a green fir, with wafers added for redemption and candles for light. Later the wafers became cookies and the apples became glass ornaments. By the 16th century the paradise tree had merged with the Christmas pyramid, a wooden shelf frame dressed with evergreens, candles and a star, and the modern Christmas tree came out of the merge. The oldest version of the tree was red and green by script.

The Poinsettia Carries Both Colors at Once

The poinsettia is the one Christmas plant holding both colors in a single specimen, and it is Mexican, not European. Nahuatl-speaking peoples call it cuetlaxóchitl, and Nahua communities grew it for ceremony, dye and medicine long before any European saw it. In Mexico it is flor de Nochebuena, flower of Christmas Eve, a name traced to Spanish Franciscan friars in the 16th century who brought the plant into nativity processions. This is a living tradition, not a closed chapter. The Nahuatl name is still in use, and a growing number of growers and botanical gardens print cuetlaxóchitl alongside or instead of poinsettia.

Joel Roberts Poinsett served as the first US minister to Mexico from 1825 to 1829 and sent cuttings home to his South Carolina greenhouse during the posting. Sources disagree on the exact year, with both 1825 and 1828 cited, and the plant took his name in the 1830s. It is now the top-selling flowering potted plant in the United States, with roughly 35 million sold each year and close to $250 million in sales. One detail worth keeping: the red part is not a flower. Those are bracts, which are modified leaves. The real flowers are the small yellow nubs at the center, and almost nobody looks at them.

The Part the Plants Do Not Explain

Medieval Churches Painted the Pairing

Medieval English churches are where red and green first show up as a deliberate design decision rather than an accident of botany. A rood screen divided the nave, where the congregation stood, from the chancel and altar, where the clergy worked. The screens were carved, painted with saints and donors, and enough survive in English parish churches to study closely. Spike Bucklow of the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the University of Cambridge examined screens dating from the 14th to the 16th centuries and found two color pairs recurring: red with green, and blue with gold. Each pair sets one fiery color against one watery one.

Bucklow's reading is that the colors were doing the screen's job. Red and green were not decoration applied to a barrier, they were the barrier made visible, marking the line between the everyday part of the church and the sacred part. He is careful about the practical side too, noting the choice would have been a question of which pigments were available as much as what they symbolized. The painters were often Flemish immigrants or travelling artists from England and continental Europe.

The Victorians Found It and Kept It

The Victorians are the link between a medieval church screen and a modern roll of wrapping paper. Rood screens fell out of use after the Reformation, and many were defaced, destroyed or left to decay. Centuries later Victorian restorers walked into those same churches to repair them and saw the color coding still on the surviving panels. Bucklow's proposal is that they borrowed the scheme for a different boundary, the one between the old year and the new.

Timing made the idea stick. The Victorians also assembled most of the Christmas people now recognize: the tree in the parlor, the card sent in the post, the family feast, the gift under the branches. A color scheme picked up during restoration work landed in the middle of an unusually good distribution system. Bucklow's own summary puts the chain in order, holding that red and green are in our psyche because of the Victorians, and were in theirs because of medieval paint.

Coca-Cola Arrived 35 Years Late

Coca-Cola did not choose the Christmas colors, and Coca-Cola says so in writing. The company's own history page states plainly that Santa appeared in a red coat before Haddon Sundblom painted him. Sundblom's Santa debuted in 1931 in The Saturday Evening Post and he kept painting the campaign until 1964, a 33-year run. Thomas Nast had been drawing Santa for Harper's Weekly decades earlier and shifted the coat from tan to red over 30 years of work. White Rock Beverages ran a red-suited Santa in 1915 and again in 1923.

The dates close the case. An Indianapolis Journal article from 1896 described a December ball where the Christmas colors, red and green, prevailed. The phrase was already common enough to print without explanation, 35 years before Coca-Cola's first Santa ad. Coca-Cola made the image enormous and gave it a global reach nothing else had. The palette was waiting for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is red a Christmas color?

Red entered Christmas through winter plants first, mainly holly berries and later the red bracts of the poinsettia, which were among the few bright colors available in a northern December. Christian tradition layered meaning on top, reading holly's berries as the blood of Christ and its spined leaves as the crown of thorns. Red was also one half of the red-and-green pairing painted onto medieval English rood screens between the 14th and 16th centuries.

Why is green a Christmas color?

Green comes from evergreens, the plants holding their color while everything else dies back for winter. Holly, ivy, yew, mistletoe and fir were all brought indoors at midwinter, and the fir became the Christmas tree by way of the medieval paradise tree hung with apples. In church symbolism the evergreen stands for life continuing through the dead season.

Did Coca-Cola invent the Christmas colors red and green?

No, and Coca-Cola's own history page states Santa appeared in a red coat before its illustrator painted him. Haddon Sundblom's Santa debuted for Coca-Cola in 1931, but an Indianapolis Journal article from 1896 already referred to red and green as the Christmas colors, 35 years earlier. Thomas Nast drew a red-suited Santa for Harper's Weekly in the 1800s, and White Rock Beverages used one in 1915 and 1923.

What is a rood screen?

A rood screen is a carved partition in a medieval church separating the nave, where the congregation stood, from the chancel and altar. Many English examples were painted with saints and donors, and red-with-green and blue-with-gold were the recurring color pairings. Spike Bucklow of the University of Cambridge proposed in 2011 that the red and green coding on 14th to 16th century screens is what Victorian restorers later carried into Christmas.

Why do red and green look so striking together?

Red and green sit directly opposite each other on the color wheel, which makes them complementary and gives the pair maximum contrast. Where two complementary colors of similar lightness meet, the eye's opposing color channels send conflicting signals and the boundary appears to shimmer or vibrate. This is why a red berry against a green leaf still reads as bright in low December light.

Why does a Christmas metal print make a great gift for Christmas decor lovers?

A Christmas metal print gift for Christmas decor lovers is a thoughtful, ready-to-display choice because it adds to a collection they rebuild every December, arrives with no framing needed, and includes a matching 5mm mouse pad for their desk. Handcrafted in North Liberty, Iowa and shipping in 3 to 5 business days, this holiday season wall art is meaningful Christmas decor that still works last-minute.

Where can you get Christmas decor like this for a desk?

X2Metal offers Christmas designs printed on glossy ChromaLuxe metal and sized for a desk, with matching 5mm mouse pads. Every print ships with a tabletop stand, so it works on a nightstand, an open shelf or a console table with no nail required, and wall mount hardware is included for later. Browse the Christmas Cheer Metal Prints collection. Everything is handcrafted in North Liberty, Iowa.

About the author: Business Alchemist | Turning Ideas into Products, Brands & Businesses | Navid Malik. Navid is the founder of X2Metal, a metal print studio in North Liberty, Iowa creating bold, durable metal prints and 5mm mouse pads.

Sources: University of Cambridge, Who colour-coded Christmas ↗; The Coca-Cola Company, Haddon Sundblom and the Coca-Cola Santas ↗; Mental Floss, Why Are Red and Green the Colors of Christmas ↗; TIME, How Red and Green Became the Colors of Christmas ↗; Bellevue University Library, Why Are Red and Green the Colors of Christmas ↗; Iowa State University Extension, What is the history of the poinsettia ↗; SDSU Extension, Cultural History of the Christmas Tree and Poinsettia ↗; VOA News, Poinsettia's Origins and Namesake's Checkered History ↗. X2Metal is not affiliated with any organization mentioned in this post.

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