Christmas Tree, What Is Your Story?
By Diana Ungureanu / Chisinau / Moldova.ORG/ -- Many legends go around about the origin of the Christmas tree, without which you can't imagine winter holidays.
The first legend, which relates to the appearance of the Christmas tree, has as protagonist the monk Boniface (now became a Saint), a ruler of Christian Church in France and Germany. One day he came across a group of pagans who were preparing to sacrifice a child for the God Thor around a towering oak. To save the child, the monk felled down the oak with his fist, and instead of the oak raised a fir tree. The monk told the pagans that fir tree is the tree of life and it represents the eternal life of Jesus.
In another legend, a poor forester found a starving and lost child. Although he was poor, he has housed the child giving to eat what he had. Next day, the forester has found out a tree with stately branches. The child would have been Jesus himself, and the fir tree - a reward for his good deed.
Another legend presents Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, wandering in the Woods, on the Christmas Eve. Amazed by the beauty of the stars shining among the branches of fir trees, he cut a fir tree and went home to his family. To suggest the star shining, he adorned tree with lit candles.
Another hypothesis argues that origins of fir tree are in a medieval play. Most people not knowing to read, in the medieval ages, biblical teachings were taught through plays. The play evoking the Paradise that presented the man's creation and the ousting of Adam and Eve from heaven is playing every year on December 24. As in that times of the year Apple trees did not have any fruit or leaves, there was used the fir tree on branches of which were suspended red apples.
According to another legend, a monk of Devonshire arrived in the 7th century in Germany to preaching the word of God. To symbolize the Holy Trinity, it is said that he used the triangular shape of the fir tree.
The sixth legend, the Romanian one, tells that one day it arose out suddenly a terrible storm with hail as big as an egg and with a wind which grabbed the stones. Surprised by storm, Jesus and Saint Peter asked for shelter the frightened trees. Worried for their fruits and leaves, oaks, beaches, apple and pear trees, willows and poplars refused to do it. The fir tree, considered useless, having no seafood to defend and a foliage resistant to the rigors of heavy hail, has accommodated without hesitation. When the storm has ended and the Sun raised again on the sky, Jesus, to reward the worthy fir tree has ordained that the fir tree not to deny its leaves as other trees during winter, and its needle leaves to be fragrant and invite to delight people. How about the lack of fir tree fruits, the God ordained that in the middle of winter, when all the fruits of the Earth will be finished, the tree to be adorned with all the wealth by the people, and then to gather around it, to think about Him – Jesus – because it is the most cherished by the Savior of all trees.
If it's to talk seriously and let legends aside, tradition of adorning of Christmas tree in the Christmas Eve comes from the West and more precisely from the Germanic nations, which they used to ornament the homes with fir twigs and mistletoe. In the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine there were adorned fir trees in the middle ages, not on Christmas, but on New Year's Eve.
Whatever is the history Christmas tree, we are glad that there is such a tradition, which pleases people and children alike.
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