The Christmas Tree, A Biography

Rockefeller Center NY

As I will be getting my Christmas tree on Friday, I thought it might be a fitting week to delve into the origin of this bizarre and unintuitive custom.

Way Back When
Evidence of tree worship (especially evergreens) is recorded as far back as the ancient Egyptians. If Santa was born in Turkey, then the first Christmas tree it turns out, was most likely a date palm. (This would be an interesting twist to the holiday to celebrate it in it's oldest arid traditions:) Worship of evergreens was symbolic of the triumph of life over death, and helped guarantee the return of the sun after it's shortest traverse across the sky on the winter solstice. Holly and mistletoe also remain green all year, and held a similar status in historical times. Many cultures considered these plants to be magical, or specifically chosen by the gods. Pagans would place gifts in the branches of fir and pines to please the winter gods, and coax the sun back from wherever it went every December. Offerings ranged from trinkets to human sacrifice! Holly and mistletoe were hung over doorways to ward of evil spirits, and protect the inhabitants of the home against sickness, disease and death which were all common in the deepest of winter when food was scarce, and darkness prevailed.

Off on a Tangent

Kiss me under the parasite

It's hard to imagine what you'd think about things you couldn't explain if you'd have lived time when there was no way of knowing the truth. It seems silly to think people thought pine trees had magical powers, but what were they supposed to think under the circumstances? Would we fare any better without our microscopes and the Internet? Take mistletoe for example. I was surprised to learn that it's actually a parasite plant! How un-Christmassy is that? Yep, that's why you can't have a mistletoe tree. There is no such thing!  Mistletoe is passed from tree to tree by birds and squirrels and grows into a little bush on the branches and limbs of bigger, stronger trees. Sometimes it grows big enough to kill them! (That's super un-Christmassy). Mistletoe is hard to see in the summer when the leaves of the host are open, but in the dead of winter, it's quite a sight. I know all of this because one December evening a few years back I was sitting on my front porch and noticed a bunch of green leaves on the otherwise vacant walnut tree in front of my house. I thought it was the most bizarre thing! It seemed pretty amazing to me that there was a little green patch among the barren branches. How could that happen? I formed all sorts of hypothesis about how that could be. It took much searching on the Internet, but I finally figured it out, and that was when I discovered that I had mistletoe hanging over my home 365 days a year and I didn't even know it! Who knows what I would have thought if I'd discovered that 500 years ago?

 Sort of Back When

St Boniface: cooking a kid or baptizing him?

Anyway, back to the Christmas tree. Saint Boniface who lived in Germany during in 690's was the beginning of the Christian story, at least as far as most researchers can tell. Whenther teh events actually happened is debatable however. It goes like this. To prove Christianity to those who believed in the old Norse traditions Saint Boniface cut down a giant oak tree supposedly belonging to the pagan god Thor to demonstrate that nothing would happen to him and thus prove that Thor didn't exist. I find this to be a fairly good example of testing a hypothesis.  At some later point, up from the trunk grew a fir tree which St Boniface took it as a sign from God that he was right. He believed God had put the tree there. And I can't help but wonder how history may have been different if a pagan had gathered the nerve to test St. Boniface's hypothesis about God? Wouldn't that have been a great Christmas story with a moral? Unfortunately that did not happen. Instead Saint Boniface declared that from then on the fir tree (or any evergreen tree?) it should be a symbol of Christian faith. I find it interesting and ironic that the literal explanation of this aspect of Christmas so closely follows the metaphorical explanation of the Christmas holiday as a whole. A Christian holiday born from the roots of pagan traditions long since cut down and forgotten. Isn't that something?

Queen Victoria's Christmas Tree

Much later during the 1500's it is said that Martin Luther was walking through the woods one winter night and was struck with awe at the sight of an evergreen tree dusted with snow and sparkling in the moonlight. So he brought the first Christmas tree indoors and adorned it with candles (to simulate the snow) so his children could witness the beauty of a sparkling tree, and to celebrate the birthday of Christ. Candles have always represented life, birth, goodness, and purity, so lighting them to celebrate something makes sense, and that's why we have them on our birthday cakes! (I'm not sure what the blowing out of the candles represents...but I might leave mine lit next year just in case.)
Until the mid 1800's Christmas trees were not a standard in the way they are today. Not every household had one. Part of the problem was lighting it. Before electricity either you had to put candles in the tree (which were an extreme fire hazard, not to mention a perfect waste of candles if you were poor) or you had a dark tree that you could barely see (so you might as well just leave it outside in the ground). And part of it was decorating it. Most people could barely feed and cloth themselves, much less decorate a tree with trinkets and stuff leads of presents beneath them! At any rate a drawing published in 1850 of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert standing along side their candle lit tree finally brought the Christmas tree to aristocratic stardom. Well to do people all over England and the US began chopping down trees and dragging them inside to decorate with candles, and sugar cubes. It was not only pretty, but quite sophisticated since queens and princes were doing it.

Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree

 Except for the lag during the Great Depression Christmas trees have been on a steady rise since the turn of the century. Once electric lights, generic ornaments and fake trees were invented ( the latter circa 1920's) getting a Christmas tree became much more economical and easier for the blue collar working class to afford. And from the 1950's on pretty much everyone who celebrates the holiday has had one!

 Now Day's
Now day's you can get a real tree, one made of purple tinsel, one that revolves on a post, a 15' tall one, or a tiny "Charlie Brown" tree with only one branch capable of supporting a singular red bulb. You can get a Star Trek  Christmas Tree, or a completely edible one. The giant bulbs (which got really hot and could burn a tree down) that are seen in A Christmas Story were eventually replaced with modern twinkle lights, and those have since given way to very cool, very energy efficient LED lights. The possibilities are infinite. The Christmas tree has traveled through the centuries from an Egyptian palace all the way to your living room. Whatever kind of Christmas tree you end up getting this year while you admire your handiwork in decorating it, don't forget to admire it's root's in the past!

 Authors Note
This year I am going to get a living Christmas tree, which is different from a real Christmas tree because it is still attached to it's roots, and can be donated to the city or town and be planted after the holiday season. I think it's a shame to cut down a perfectly healthy beautiful tree just so I can have it in my living room for a month. It always makes me sad when I take down all the ornaments in early January and abandon what was once my beautiful Christmas tree, but now is brown and dying to the curb to be picked up and dumped in a landfill. It just seems like such a horrible ending to such a wonderful season. But at the same time fake trees just aren't the same, and I'm not sure it would feel like Christmas at all if I didn't have any tree to stack presents under. This is the perfect solution for me, and I'd encourage any of you who feel the same way to look into living trees. I love the idea that my tree will have a long life in park somewhere filled with birds and squirrels and where kids will play in the shade beneath it's branches in the summer.