Mitten Tree Day Date in the current year: December 6, 2024

A mitten is a type of glove that covers the hand but doesn’t have separate finger openings, while still separating the thumb from the rest of the fingers. Mittens are generally warmer than gloves, but offer less dexterity. They have been around for thousands of years; today they are most commonly associated with cold weather, warmth and comfort, children’s clothing, various occupations, and some winter sports.

Mitten Tree Day is a charitable holiday in which people make or collect mittens, hang them on a Christmas tree, and then donate them to charity. There are several versions regarding the holiday’s origin. One version links it to Candace Christiansen’s book The Mitten Tree, first published in 1995. It tells the story of an elderly woman named Sarah who watches the kids waiting for the school bus at the bus stop and notices that one of them doesn’t have mittens. That night, she knits a pair of cozy mittens and hangs them on the blue spruce tree near the bus stop for the boy to find. It soon becomes a game, with Sarah knitting a new pair of mittens each night and the children finding them on the tree each morning.

However, there are newspaper references to “mitten trees” that date back much earlier than the book. For example, there is a 1949 article about children in the Primary Department of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church who hung gloves and mittens from the branches of a Christmas tree. After Christmas, these mittens and gloves were donated to the Lutheran World Service and distributed to children in Europe who needed warm clothing. In the 1950s and 1960s, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts knitted or collected mittens and hung them on trees to give away at Christmastime.

And the history of providing mittens to those in need of warm clothing goes back even further. During the Civil War, a New England woman named Abby Condon assembled an all-female workforce to knit mittens for fighting soldiers at 25 cents a pair. During World War I, knitting mittens at home to support soldiers again became part of the war effort.

Be that as it may, in recent years Mitten Tree Day has been observed annually on December 6. On this day, charities, churches, schools, and other organizations ask people to donate mittens, hang them on a Christmas tree, and then give them to people in need. You can participate by setting up a mitten tree, asking your family, friends, and co-workers to donate mittens, and giving them to a charity that collects warm clothing for people in need. And don’t forget to post about the holiday on social media with the hashtag #MittenTreeDay to help spread the word.

By the way, Mitten Tree Day doesn’t have to be about mittens. If you haven’t found a charity that needs warm clothing, you can give back to your community in any way you can: volunteer at a soup kitchen or animal shelter, organize a canned food drive or a charity sale, donate money to a charity that supports a cause you care about, perform a random act of kindness, etc.