©
Janet Davis
When and where did the
Christmas tree tradition begin? Most
historians point to Riga, Latvia, and archival records from
the Brotherhood of Blackheads, a group of unmarried merchants who sported black
hats and lived in The House of Blackheads, built in 1334 overlooking the town hall
square. The records describe a 1510 celebration
in which an evergreen “new year’s tree” decorated with paper flowers was placed
in the square for two weeks of pre-solstice festivity. In northern Europe,
the winter solstice was known as ‘yule”, a word we now associate with a
Christian Christmas tradition (yule logs, yuletide greetings). The Riga
tree was burned on a bonfire at the end of the ceremonies, suggesting a sacrificial
offering – possibly to the pagan sun god Mithras, said to be born on the winter
solstice, the shortest day of the year. Today, The House of Blackheads, rebuilt in 1995-99,
overlooks Riga’s
modern Christmas festivities.
A second documented record
of a decorated Christmas tree dates from 1605 in Strasbourg,
which was then part of Germany. It was erected outdoors and decorated with
red apples. Why an evergreen tree? And why apples? To answer that, it’s necessary to dig
further back in history, to the Middle Ages when Germanic cultures believed
that evil spirits were responsible for the dying-down of nature in autumn. They thought that by cutting boughs of the
only trees that looked alive – evergreens -- and bringing them indoors, 
the inhabitants would be protected from evil spirits
through the long, cold winter. By the 14th century, the Alsace
region had instituted laws prohibiting farmers from cutting evergreens,
evidently to conserve the forests.
And the apples? Some scholars believe this tradition may also
have originated in the 14th century when the church taught bible
stories to a mostly illiterate congregation through a series of pageants called
Miracle Plays. The play that was
presented on December 24th, Adam and Eve’s Day on the early
Christian Calendar of Saints, featured the Paradeisbaum or Paradise Tree and
used apples hanging from a spruce or pine tree to depict how Eve was tempted by
the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Over
time, the German people began to erect Paradeisbaum in their own homes,
decorating them not only with apples but with marzipan fruit and vegetables,
paper roses, gilded nuts, sugar plums, candies in eggshells, gingerbread
and cookies in the shape of hearts,
bells, angels and stars, symbols of the new-born Christ child. On January 6th, the Twelfth Night
in pre-Christian times and later the Feast of the Epiphany, the tree would be shaken and the children
invited to eat the sweets that fell, a tradition known as the Plundern.
German immigrants are
credited with introducing the custom of the Christmas tree to North
America. In the United States, homesick Hessian soldiers,
brought over by Britain and
deployed from Quebec
to help fight the 1776 Revolutionary War, cut and decorated forest trees. The first record of a Christmas tree in
Canada dates from 1781 in Sorel, Quebec when German-born Baron Friederick von
Riedesel cut a balsam fir from the woods near his home and set it up indoors,
decorating it with white candles.
The song ‘O Tannenbaum’,
known to us as ‘O Christmas Tree’, originated in Germany around the 16th
Century, originally as a lament by a man comparing the fickleness of his lover
to the faithful and steadfast nature of the “fir-tree dear”. In 1824, Ernst Anschutz rewrote the lyrics
to praise the Christmas tree.
For more on Riga’s Christmas tree history, see firstchristmastree.com.
Adapted from an article that appeared originally at gardencrazy.com
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