Can Christmas be celebrated without Christmas Tree? The bushy conical greens of an X-mas tree characterise the holiday spirit globally. Here’s how they came into existence.
The Christmas tree was first recorded to be used by German Lutherans in the 16th century, with records indicating that a Christmas tree was placed in the Cathedral of Strasbourg in 1539, about 760km southwest of Berlin.
Note the lyrics of majestic carol “The Holly and the Ivy”: 'When Holly and Ivy are both fully grown/ Of all trees that are in the wood/The holly wears the crown”. Holly, the Christmas tree is first noted in rural British church records of the sixteenth century.
Martin Luther (not the king), the German monk of sixteenth century and a figurehead of protestant reformation, believed that pine trees represented the goodness of God. This assertion made Europeans buy into the Christmas Tree tradition.
According to a Christian legend, 8th century Saint Bonafice cut down an Oak Tree to save a non-believer’s life. A new fir tree grew in Oak tree’s place with branches representing Christ’s eternal growth. He cut down the new fir tree and hung it upside down instead of the non-believer human; and the tradition of trees being hung upside down came into being, a representation of Holy Trinity.
In 1419, a guild in Germany’s Freiburg put up a tree decorated with apples, flour-paste wafers, tinsel and gingerbread. In ‘Paradise Plays’ that were performed to celebrate the feast day of Adam and Eve, which fell on Christmas Eve, a tree of knowledge was represented by an evergreen fir with apples tied to its branches. The tree thus came to be associated with Christmas.