We know from our studies of primitive cultures that trees remaining green in the winter have long suggested special godlike power....As Christianity supplanted older, pagan religions, the decorating of evergreens continued in various parts of northern Europe on many special occasions....The Roman Catholic church frequently banned or otherwise tried to discourage the use of the evergreen, but the age-old custom remained so deeply ingrained in the German culture that the tree eventually became transformed into a Christian symbol.
Although the veneration of the evergreen is firmly rooted in pre-Christian traditions, the Christmas tree has two interesting Christian traditions behind it. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries evergreens with apples hung from their boughs were know to have played an important role in the miracle plays presented in our outside churches on the twenty-fourth of December....In the early church calendar of saints December 24 was Adam and Eve's Day, the occasion for a play depicting the dramatic events concerning the fruit tree in the Garden of Eden. In many cities, before the performance the actors paraded through the streets with the actor who would portray Adam carrying the "Paradise tree." In place of the winter-bare branches of a real apple tree, an evergreen decorated with apples was the usual substitute. Since this tree was the only prop on the stage during the play, the image left a lasting impression associated with Christmas long after the medieval plays were no longer performed. By the seventeenth century evergreens hung with apples were no longer considered strictly trees of temptation and were traditionally decorated each Christmas, though as late as the latter part of the nineteenth century people in northern Germany still bought little figures of Adam and Eve and the serpent to put on their "Tree of Life."
The Christmas tree also has Christian associations as old as the tenth century that link it to flowering or fruit-bearing trees rather than to the evergreen. Throughout Europe there are records and folk tales concerning trees and bushes that mysteriously burst into bloom on Christmas Eve or Day. Beginning in the sixteenth century references indicate that many Germans cut cherry and other flowering branches and took them into their homes on St. Andrew's Day (November 30). The branches were put in water in a warm room and "forced" in the hope of obtaining blooms in time for Christmas.
The oldest Christmas tree to be decorated standing in a parlor as we know the tradition today is described in a fragment of a 1602 travel diary left us by an unidentified visitor to Strasbourg. The writer tells of fir trees set up and hung with paper roses of many different colors and with apples, flat wafers, gilded candies, and sugar. In early Christian art the rose was a symbol for the Virgin Mary, and the flat wafers are obviously related to the "host," the communion symbol for Christ. A tree decorated with such wafers or cookies with religious designs became known as a Christbaum. By the seventeenth century, then, the age old, winter-defying evergreen was a common sight in Christian homes honoring the Christ Child each Christmas.
--Philip V. Snyder
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