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Dreaming of a Green Christmas
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10360 |
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Life
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12 / 1986 |
1,745 Words |
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Rosemary G. Rennicke
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There's a dear old tree,
an evergreen tree,
and it blossoms once a year:
Tis loaded with fruit from top to root,
And it brings to all good cheer,
For its blossoms bright are small candles white
And its fruit is dolls and toys.
And they are all free for both you and me
If we're good little girls and boys.
-----Luella Wilson Smith
Though Irving Berlin, with a little help from crooner Bing Crosby, would have us dream otherwise, the color of Christmas is green, not white. While Christmas may not always mean snow--there have been plenty of balmy holidays on record, even in the bone chilling Blizzard Belt--it has included some type of living greenery from the earliest celebrations.
Green plants have played a part in festivals and rituals since the days of dynastic Egypt. Ancient Romans filled their homes with greens from the Kalends of January, and European pagan peoples treasured evergreens for their everlasting life during dormant winters.
As Christianity spread its message throughout Europe, a tangle of green plants trailed along, each ascribed a particular association with the Virgin or a saint. The herb rosemary, for instance, related to Mary, because, it is said, she laid her blue cloak to dry over a bunch of it on the Flight from Egypt, thus turning the herb its characteristic silvery gray. St. Boniface, who carried the word of God to Germany in the early 700s, felled worship of the mighty oak--sacred to the Norse god Odin--with a single ax stroke, and replaced it with reverence for the fir, now symbolic of the peace and endless life of Christ. It is perhaps from this tale that Germans have developed their deep love of the forest, and of Christmas.
The direct predecessor of our present Christmas tree was planted in medieval Germany. Among the mystery plays that entertained and illuminated an illiterate populace about biblical lessons was the Paradise play, held on the feast day of Adam and Eve, December 24. The riveting centerpiece of the drama was an evergreen strung with apples, that fabled fruit of knowledge. Even after the church abandoned the practice, common folk continued to set up apple-dotted evergreens in their homes.
Around the same time, believers began honoring Christ's birthday by erecting wooden pyramid-shaped frames lit with candles, symbolic of the Light of the World, and decorated with fruit, images of the Holy Family, greens, and cones. Eventually, the candles and ornaments found their way from the so-called light-stock to the evergreen, resulting in the decorated tree.
Martin Luther was certainly familiar with these two customs when he went walking in the forest on Christmas Eve and was inspired by the stars to decorate an evergreen with candles for his children. Apart from this oft-repeated legend, the first documented Christmas tree, decorated with paper flowers, apples, sugar, and wafers resembling the communion host, stood in Strasbourg in
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