Page 18 - IAV Digital Magazine #560

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O! Christmas Tree
O! Christmas Tree
Why, every Christmas, do so many people endure the mess of dried pine needles, the risk of a fire haz- ard and impossibly tangled strings of lights?
Strapping a fir tree to the hood of my car and worrying about the strength of the twine, I sometimes wonder if I should just buy an artificial tree and do away with all the hassle. Then my inner historian scolds me – I have to remind myself that I’m taking part in one of the world’s oldest religious traditions. To give up the tree would be to give up a ritual that predates Christmas itself.
Almost all agrarian societies independent- ly venerated the Sun in their pantheon of gods at one time or
another – there was the Sol of the Norse, the Aztec Huitzilopochtli,
the Greek Helios.
The solstices, when the Sun is at its high- est and lowest points in the sky, were major events. The winter sol- stice, when the sky is its darkest, has been a notable day of cele- bration in agrarian societies throughout human history. The Persian Shab-e
Yalda, Dongzhi in China and the North American Hopi
Soyal all independent- ly mark the occasion.
The favored décor for ancient winter sol- stices? Evergreen plants.
Whether as palm branches gathered in Egypt in the celebra- tion of Ra or wreaths for the Roman feast
of Saturnalia, ever- greens have long served as symbols of the perseverance of life during the bleak- ness of winter, and the promise of the Sun’s return.
Christmas came much later. The date was not fixed on liturgical calendars until cen- turies after Jesus’ birth, and the English word Christmas – an abbreviation of “Christ’s Mass”
– would not
appear until over 1,000 years after the original event.
While Dec. 25 was ostensibly a Christian holiday, many Europeans simply car- ried over traditions from winter solstice celebrations, which were notoriously rau- cous affairs. For example, the 12 days of Christmas com-
memorated in the pop- ular carol actually orig- inated in ancient Germanic Yule cele- brations.
The continued use of evergreens, most notably the Christmas tree, is the most visi- ble remnant of those ancient solstice cele- brations. Although Ernst Anschütz’s well- known 1824 carol dedicated to the tree is translated into English as “O Christmas Tree,” the title of the original German tune is simply “Tannenbaum,” mean- ing fir tree. There is no reference to Christmas in the carol, which Anschütz based on a much older Silesian folk love song. In keeping with old sol- stice celebrations, the song praises the tree’s faithful hardiness dur- ing the dark and cold winter.
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