Whence Came The Christmas Tree? - History of the Christmas Tree
Source : K-House eNews
December, 2004
Christmas season is in its full bustle now, and millions of
families around the world are busily moving furniture and
pulling out boxes of decorations to beautify their living
rooms with Christmas trees. However, there seems to be very
little connection between decorated evergreens and the birth
of Jesus Christ. Many Christians wonder whether they should
continue the tradition of the Christmas tree, while others
have no qualms and enjoy all the trappings of the Christmas
season. We have provided below a series of histories and
legends for the benefit of all who wonder about the
historical significance of the Christmas tree and how it
ties into Christian tradition.
Ancient Rome
During the ancient festival of Saturnalia, Romans decked
trees with small trinkets and also decorated their homes and
temples with ivy and holly and wreaths. Gifts of coins,
fruit, dolls and candles were exchanged during this time,
but the gift giving could get more extreme. A Greek writer
Libanius wrote that, "The impulse to spend seizes everyone."
St. Boniface
The Bible often railed against the ancient pagan practice of
worshiping idols under trees (Hosea 4:13, Ezek 6:13) in the
mountains. Around AD 1000, a man named Boniface served as a
missionary to the Germanic peoples in Europe, teaching them
about Christianity. According to legend, Boniface came upon
a group of pagans still worshipping an oak tree, sacred to
the god Thor. In his fury at their foolishness, the
missionary chopped the tree down. When a young fir tree grew
up in place of the oak, Boniface saw it as a sign of the
Christian faith, with its triangular shape representing the
Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The converted German
people began to revere the evergreen as God's tree. By the
12th century in central Europe, the fir tree was being hung
upside down, undecorated, during the feast of the Nativity
to represent the triune God of Christianity.
The Paradise Tree
In medieval times, when few people could read, plays were
often used to describe Biblical events. The Creation week
and the fall of Adam and Eve were taught as a Paradise Play,
performed on December 24th each year. However, since it was
impractical to use real fruit trees to represent the trees
in the Garden of Eden in winter, evergreens were decorated
with fruit as a substitute. Paper flowers were also used to
decorate the Tree of Knowledge, originally only red
(representing knowledge) and white (representing innocence),
but later of many colors.
Martin Luther
The first Christmas tree lights are credited to Martin
Luther. One winter night while walking home through the
forest, Luther grew fearful of the dark and of meeting a
wild animal. When he looked through the trees, however, and
saw the twinkling stars offering him light and direction, he
was greatly comforted. When he got home, he tried to
describe to his family the beauty of the stars through the
trees, but found words could not do justice to the scene. He
then brought in a fir tree, which he decorated with candles
to portray the lovely stars, the light that God had
provided.
The Visitor to Strasbourg
The first written record of a Christmas tree was found in
the diary of a visitor to Strasbourg around 1605, at that
time a city in Germany. He described how the people would
set up fir trees in their parlors and decorate them with
apples, gold foil, "wafers and golden sugar-twists and paper
flowers of all colors."
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
When Queen Victoria was 13, she wrote about the Christmas
trees decorated with lights and sugar ornaments, a tradition
which the German aristocracy had brought to the English
royalty. Victoria later married the German Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburn, who loved the German tradition of the Christmas
tree. Victoria was very popular with the British people and
had a great influence on styles and public opinion. When an
illustration of Albert and Victoria with their children
around a Christmas tree was published in The Illustrated
London News in 1848, many British families were soon
decorating trees in their homes at Christmas.
The traditions of the Christmas tree soon spread to other
parts of Europe and to America and many other areas of the
world. Many have combined the manger scene with the tree,
while in some areas of the world, the manger scene is
preferred by itself. Whichever traditions your family
chooses to observe, do so in honor of God Almighty, who gave
His Son to the earth as a little baby, to one day die on
another tree for the sins of all mankind.