Why have you never had chestnuts roasting on an open fire?
Everyone has Christmas songs they love, and Christmas songs they hate (“Last Christmas”, cough cough). But I’m certain that you have sung of chestnuts roasting on an open fire at some time in your life. My dad used to sing it to me while pretending to roast my toy horse, named Chestnut, over a fire. I did not appreciate this as a child and would attempt to rescue my horse. “The Christmas Song” is not about my horse Chestnut, but why was roasting chestnuts so common that it made it into a Christmas song? Why don’t we roast chestnuts anymore?
The opening line of “The Christmas Song” is rooted in characteristics of the American chestnut. About 120 years ago, Castanea dentata, or the American chestnut, dominated the forests of the eastern United States. An estimated 4 billion American chestnut trees were alive and well. The American chestnut was a member of the beech family, and its wood was rot-resistant, making it ideal for construction. The American chestnut was one of the largest trees of the eastern United States, as it could rapidly grow about 100 feet high and about 10 feet in diameter. These trees also lived an average of 200–300 years, earning them the nickname of “Redwoods of the East.” The American chestnut was the king of the American forests.
A mature American chestnut. Photo was taken in 1914 in Mitchell County, North Carolina. Photo provided by United States Forest Service and is in the public domain. Click for link.
Of course, the American chestnut also produced large nuts. The nuts were produced in the Christmas season—much later than any other trees in the eastern United States. This provided food for wildlife and people in the harsh winter months. One tree could produce as many as 6,000 nuts over a season. The chestnuts were nutritious because they were high in fiber, protein, and vitamin C, but low in fat. This, perhaps, is the reason the chestnut stars in “The Christmas Song,” as people would often roast and eat the chestnuts in the cold winters of the eastern forests. The song, however, would last much longer than the tree.
Fuzzy American chestnuts-Yum! Photo credit: Peatcher, cc by Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Click for link.
Around 1904, disaster struck the American chestnut. The Chinese chestnut tree (Castanea mollissima) was purposefully introduced to the United States, but a parasitic fungus was accidently introduced along with the Chinese chestnut tree. This fungus, known as the chestnut blight, devastated the American chestnut trees. The chestnut blight killed an estimated 4 billion trees in the eastern United States by the 1950’s—leaving only dozens scattered across the United States and a few individual American chestnut trees left in its native range of the eastern United States. A few American chestnut trees can be found today in Oregon, where pioneers transported the seeds in the 1880’s. The American chestnut, however, was no longer king of eastern North America.
My dad and I in a forest in Ohio, long after the time of the chestnut. At least you can always tell someone that that tree is not an American chestnut. Photo Credit: Kathy Sales.
Yet there is hope for the American chestnut. The American chestnut is not extinct, and although the chestnut blight continues to exist in the eastern United States, scientists are working on creating a genetic hybrid American-Chinese chestnut tree that would be resistant to the chestnut blight. The historical American chestnut will never reclaim its throne as king of the eastern American forests, but we may once again roast chestnuts on an open fire.
Rachel Sales is a Ph.D student, studying paleoecology. Find out more about her research here.