Topic: Christmas Tree And Christmas Traditions, Part 1 Of 2

The Christmas tree is one of the most popular and cherished Christmas customs. Each year, 35-40 million live trees are purchased and decorated in the United States alone. But when, where, and how did this custom begin? What is the origin of the Christmas tree? What does it mean?
Many answers to these questions have been offered. Some are completely erroneous. Some make no distinction between history and legend. Unfortunately, few of these answers give sources for their assertions about the Christmas tree.

In doing the research for this article, I found three works especially helpful. The first is "Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan" by Clement A. Miles. (1) Though now a bit dated, Miles's work made use of the best scholarship of the time, much of which has not been improved upon (2), and therefore is still a valuable resource. Of equal value is Francis X. Weiser's "Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs." (3) Weiser's work only devotes several chapters to the customs of Christmas, but these are well researched and articulated. I also found "The Solstice Evergreen" by Sheryl Ann Karas to be helpful. Karas has done an admirable job researching the various ways the evergreen has been used in various cultures over the centuries and this is the book's strength. (4)

What was the origin of the Christmas tree? As much as I would like to embrace as fact the oft-quoted story Martin Luther was the first to set up a Christmas tree (or at least a lighted one), I cannot -- for the story is pure legend. (5) Many years of intensive Luther scholarship has turned up nothing to support it. (6) There is scholarly consensus the Christmas tree originated in Germany. Indeed, the earliest record of an evergreen tree being used and decorated (but without lights) for Christmas is 1521 in the German region of Alsace. (7) Another useful description has been found among the notes of an unknown resident of Strasbourg in 1605, who writes that "At Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlors at Strasburg and hang thereon roses cut of many- coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold-foil, sweets.."(8) Some fifty years later (about 1650) the great Lutheran theologian Johann Dannhauer wrote in his "The Milk of the Catechism" that "the Christmas or fir tree, which people set up in their houses, hang with dolls and sweets, and afterwards shake and deflower.. Whence comes this custom I know not; it is child's play .. Far better were it to point the children to the spiritual cedar-tree, Jesus Christ." (9)

Several conclusions can be gleaned from these quotations. First, we are told some of the items with which the first Christmas trees were decorated: paper roses, apples, Communion wafers, gold, foil, sweets, and dolls. Second, even in 1650 a noted scholar like Dannhauer did not know the origin of Christmas trees. Third, not all Christians approved of these trees, even in the beginning. Fourth, the first Christmas trees, as far as we know, did not have lights. According to Weiser, the first mention of lights (candles) on a Christmas tree is in the seventeenth century. (10)

From the mid-seventeenth century onward the Christmas tree slowly grew in popularity and use. However, it was not until the beginning of the 19th century that the use of the Christmas tree grew into the general German custom that it is today. Also at this time it spread to the Slavic people of eastern Europe. The Christmas tree was probably first used in America about 1700 when the first wave of German immigration settled in western Pennsylvania. During the War of Independence, Hessian soldiers supposedly set up Christmas trees. (11) It is widely held the Christmas tree was first introduced into France in 1837 when Princess Helen of Mecklenburg brought it to Paris after her marriage to the Duke of Orlans. The Christmas tree made its royal debut in England when Prince Albert of Saxony, the husband of Queen Victoria, set up a tree in Windsor Castle in 1841. (12)

After this the Christmas tree grew in popularity, though in 1850 Charles Dickens was still referring to it as a "new German toy." (13)

But from where did Christians get the idea of the Christmas tree? Was it a new idea or was there a historical custom upon which they were building?
Karas has amply demonstrated evergreens have been a symbol of rebirth from ancient times. Bringing greenery into one's home, often at the time of the winter solstice, symbolized life in the midst of death in many cultures. (14) The Romans decked their homes with evergreens and other greenery during the Kalends of January. (15) Living trees were also brought into homes during the old German feast of Yule, which originally was a two-month feast beginning in November. The Yule tree was planted in a tub and brought into the home. (16) However, the evidence just does not exist which shows that Christians first used trees at Christmas as a symbol of rebirth, nor that the Christmas tree was a direct descendent of the Yule tree. On the contrary, the evidence we have points in another direction. The Christmas tree appears to be a descendent of the Paradise tree and the Christmas light of the late Middle Ages. (17)

From the eleventh century, religious plays called "mystery plays" became quite popular throughout Europe. These plays were performed outdoors and in churches. One of the most prevalent of these plays was the "Paradise play." The play depicted the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, their sin, and their banishment from Paradise. The play would end with the promise of the coming Savior and His Incarnation (cf. Gen. 3:15). The Paradise play was simple by today's standards. The only prop on stage was the "Paradise tree," a fir tree adorned with apples. From this tree, at the appropriate time in the play, Eve would take the fruit, eat it, and give it to Adam.
Because of abuses that crept into the mystery plays (i.e., immoral behavior), the Church forbade these plays during the fifteenth century. The people had grown so accustomed to the Paradise tree, however, that they began putting their own Paradise tree up in their homes on Dec. 24. They did so on Dec. 24 because this was the feast day of Adam and Eve (at least in the Eastern Church). The Paradise tree, as it had in the Paradise plays, symbolized both a tree of sin and a tree of life. For this reason, the people would decorate these trees with apples (representing the fruit of sin) and homemade wafers (like communion wafers which represented the fruit of life). Later, candy and sweets were added.

1. Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1912).
2. Such as, A. Tille, Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht (Leipzig, 1893); A. Tille, Yule and Christmas: their Place in the Germanic Year (London, 1899); H. F. Feilberg, Jul (Copenhagen, 1904); E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (Oxford, 1903).
3. Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958).
4. Sheryl Ann Karas, The Solstice Evergreen: The History, Folklore and Origins of the Christmas Tree Rev. Ed. (Fairfield: Aslan Publishing, 1998).
5. The story has appeared in many forms. Here is how it appears in Karas, 111: "One clear cold Christmas Eve the famous Reformation leader Martin Luther was walking home through the woods. As it was a beautiful starry night, he paused for a moment to gaze at the sky in reverent meditation. He was in a grove of tall pines .. From where he stood it looked as though thousands of stars had settled on their branches. He proceeded to cut a tiny tree and took it home where he decorated it with small candles in metal holders to recreate his experience for his children. That glittering tree became a tradition for his family in the many Christmasses to come just as it has for many other families around the world."
6. Another pure legend that is sometimes passed off as historical fact is the story of St. Boniface. As one web page puts it: "The first Christmas tree is said to have originated in 8th century Germany when a British missionary, St. Boniface, cut down a giant oak that crushed every tree in its path except a small fir sapling. Considering this a miracle, St. Boniface called it "the tree of the Christ child."
7. J. Lefftz and A. Pfleger, eds., Els?ssische Weihnacht, hereafter EW (Kolmar, 1941), cited in Weiser, 100.
8. Quoted in Miles, 265. The manuscript can be found in EW, 53.
9. Miles, 265, quoting from Tille, Deutschen Weihnachten, 259.
10. Weiser, 101, citing EW 55. A later explicit mention of candles on a Christmas tree occurred in a Latin work on Christmas presents by Karl Gottfried Kissling of the University of Wittenberg, written in 1737. See Miles, 266.
11. Karas, 106.
12. Though Miles claims it was alluded to as early as 1789.
13. As laid out in Weiser, 101. See also Miles, 267.
14. Karas, 3-5.
15. Miles, 268.
16. Karas, 103-104.
17. This is the thesis of Weiser, 98-100, which, in my opinion, is the most convincing.
18. According to Weiser, pictures of these "Christmas pyramids" can be seen in O. Huth, Der Lichterbaum (Berlin, 1943), 72ff.
19. Weiser, 102.

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