Yule Legends Span Many Years and Many Lands

Taupo Times, Volume 19, Issue 98, 17 December 1970, Page 8 (Supplement)

Yule Legends Span Many Years and Many Lands

Did you know that the first Christmas tree erected in a church in U.S., in 1851 shocked its Cleveland congregation. It was considered too heathenish ! ☆ America gave the world its most Beloved Christmas plant — the poinsettia. The plant is a native of tropical America.

i A x, , % ☆ Bayberry candles, which *: are said to foretell good \ luck for the coming year T: if they burn bright at I Christmas, were first made f. by early settlers in Amer- |* ica. They dipped bayberry §5 branches in wax and burned them during the m holidays. |" ☆ The story is told that f over a hundred years ago, V a parish priest in Sals- ^ burg, Austria, returning i: late one night from ad- | ministering last rites to a £ dying woman, was awed | by the particular majesty ?. of the still, sparkled-with-stars night; hewent home, f, wrote the lovely, haunting i* words of "Silent Night, gt Holy Night." With his V organist, Franz Gruber, t playing the great music on s: his guitar, the Father, [ Joseph Mohr, first introf. duced the strains of this I popular hymn to a small f congregation in Austria.

☆ A churchman, John y Pierpont, composed the f; gay Christmas song, "Jin- ( gle Bells," which has been |J popular for over a century. f ☆ The number of mince f pies you taste at Christ- % mas indicates the number • of happy months you'll \ have during the coming year, according to an old English belief. ☆ For three centuries following His birth, Christ's nativity was celebrated at various times in January, March, April, May, September, and October by Christian groups.