The Christmas Tree

Thinking about Christmas immediately brings Christmas trees to mind. As a matter of fact, Christmas trees are one of the most recognized images of the Christmas season and they are visible just about everywhere. Furthermore, many of the traditional Christmas activities revolve around Christmas trees. First there is the ritual of selecting a perfect tree, then setting it up in a prominent location in the home, then comes the decorating aspect, piling up the gifts under it, coming together around it to sing Christmas carols and drink eggnog. But how did it all begin?

The earliest story that was ever found that associates trees with Christmas dates back to the beginning of the 700s. This story talks about a British monk and missionary who was born in 680, was christened as Winfrid and was eventually canonized as St. Boniface. As the ancient story goes, St. Boniface delivered a sermon about the Nativity to a group of Germanic Druids on the outskirts of Geisma in Germany and attempted to convince them that the oak tree was not sacred or as inviolable as their pagan teachings have led them to believe. Often referred to as the Apostle of Germany, St. Boniface proved his point by chopping down an oak tree right then and there. As the mighty tree fell and crashed to the ground it left everything crushed in its wake — every shrub but a single little fir tree sapling. This surprising survival of the tender seedling was quickly interpreted by St. Boniface as a miracle and he concluded his sermon by calling it “the tree of the Christ Child.” From then on, planting of fir saplings was added to the ensuing Christmas celebrations in Germany.

Researchers, theologians and historians have found countless documents attesting to the fact that fir trees which remained outdoors as well as those which were brought inside homes were decorated with devotion and religious zeal by the sixteenth century in an attempt to commemorate the miraculous event with St. Boniface in Germany. In an insightful effort to save forests from complete destruction by religious Christian zealots, a decree was issued from Ammerschweier, Alsace in 1561 which proclaims that no one “shall have for Christmas more than one bush or more than eight shoes’ length.” The earliest accounts of decorations on Christmas trees describe “roses cut of many colored paper, apples, wafers, gilt and sugar.”

Many theologians and religious historians believe, and no evidence was ever found to contradict this belief, that it was Martin Luther, the sixteenth century Protestant reformer, who first added light to a Christmas tree by affixing lighted candles to its branches in order to emulate the twinkling of stars in a fir forest.

The Christbaum which means the “Christ tree” was a deeply rooted tradition that was permanently established and branched out to other parts of Western Europe by the 1700s. However, it failed to gain popularity in England until Prince Albert, the son of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a duchy in central Germany), married Queen Victoria of England in 1840, and brought the custom of decorating Christmas trees from his childhood in Germany into his married life in England.

The Christmas tree and its customary decorations were most likely brought into the New World by the Pennsylvania Germans. This fact is strongly affirmed in a diary that belonged to Matthew Zahm of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and its entry which was dated December 20, 1821 where he speaks of the Christmas tree and its many decorations. Thus far, this is the earliest written record associated with Christmas trees that was ever found in America.

F. W. Woolworths Company was the original chain of five and dime stores based in the United States and in 1880 was first to sell manufactured Christmas tree ornaments which were extremely successful. In 1882 the first electrically lighted Christmas tree appeared and in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge flamboyantly lit the first outdoor tree on the front lawn of the White House.

Having state all that I had thus far about Christmas trees, it would be remiss of me not to mention that decorating of trees dates back to the pre-Christian Era in Egypt where evergreen trees were felled, mounted and adorned with offerings of food and precious gifts to their pagan gods. Evergreen trees were selected for remaining fresh and green through the four seasons, therefore symbolizing immortality and fertility. Egyptian priests went even further by teaching that evergreen trees grew out of the grave of their god Osiris who was resurrected by the energy of an evergreen tree after having been killed by another god.

Even the Bible, Jeremiah 10:2-6, speaks out about the pagan custom of the tree: "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen . . . For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not."