History of the Yule Tree
The first known references to a fir tree decorated specifically for Christmas was in Latvia around 1510. Evergreen trees decorated with artificial roses were burned in the squares of Riga and Reval by local guilds as an entertainment on Christmas Eve. Twenty years later, by 1531, there was a thriving market for Christmas trees in Strasbourg. A description of Christmas trees in Strasbourg in 1604 tells us:
““On Christmas they put fir trees in the rooms at Strasbourg, they hang red roses cut from many-coloured paper, apples, offerings, gold tinsel, sugar. It is the custom to make a four corned frame around it.””
In Britain, the Christmas tree was popularised by Prince Albert who brought the tradition over from Germany. Newspaper illustrations in 1848 showed the royal family with a Christmas tree decorated with glass-blown ornaments, candles and ribbons in Windsor Castle.
Christian myth credits Saint Boniface with the invention of the Christmas tree when he chopped down the sacred oak of Thor at Geismar. Another story is that Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) was so impressed by a forest scene that he allegedly cut down a small fir tree, took it home, and decorated it with lighted candles. Both were obvious attempts to give existing folk customs a Christian gloss.
The decorating of a tree was (and still is) a common folk practice, and was widespread in Pagan cultures, particularly around the winter solstice. Trees were objects of veneration in ancient times: when all else fades in winter evergreens remain changeless in a changing world, strong enough to resist the death time. There was a desire to stimulate the fertility of trees in the dead time of winter by placing pieces of cake and bread in their branches.
At the festival of Dionysus anyone with a tree in the garden would dress it up to represent the god. Romans hung evergreens around their houses during the Saturnalia and ancient Egyptians brought in palm branches on the shortest day of the year to symbolize the sun god Ra's victory over death, which would mean that life would return to Earth.
Early Christians specifically condemned the decorating of trees as a Pagan custom. In the fourth century CE, the Emperor Theodosius wrote:
“If someone burns incense in front of man-made idols, they are damned; or if such a person worships idolatrous images by decorating a tree with ribbons, or if he sets up an altar outside – he is guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege.”
A passage in the Bible, from Jeremiah 10: 2-4, warns against the Pagan practice of decorating trees:
“Thus says the Lord, do not learn the way of the nations (Pagans), and do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens although the nations are terrified by them; for the customs of the peoples are delusion; because it is wood cut from the forest, The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. They decorate it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers so that it will not totter.”
Some modern American fundamentalist Christians still condemn the use of Christmas trees as a Pagan custom, which, of course, it is.
The above comes from Yule: History, Lore and Celebration, by Anna Franklin (Lear Books, 2010) who is an English author and High Priestess of the Hearth of Arianrhod
