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Corn (or maize in Britain, where the word “corn” originally meant wheat or oats) was not being popped in Regency England, nor were cranberries being universally grown, so the tradition of stringing cranberries and popcorn for garlands —which dates to 1842 in the U.S., by the way—was exclusively American for a long time. Popcorn actually goes back thousands of years in the Americas. Native Americans were the first to cultivate cranberries in North America. But cranberries of that variety weren’t cultivated in England until Sir Joseph Banks, the famous horticulturist and botanist, first did it in the late 18th century. It didn’t catch on for a while there, however. So those strings of popcorn and cranberries for Christmas trees are not a part of the Regency holiday. Then again, neither were Christmas trees, except when put up by German descendants and immigrants to England!
