FACTS AND FANCIES THAT HAVE GROWN WITH THE FESTIVE TREE

Taupo Times, Volume 19, Issue 98, 17 December 1970, Page 3 (Supplement)

FACTS AND FANCIES THAT HAVE GROWN WITH THE FESTIVE TREE

One of the most joyous elements of the Christmas season is the Evergreen tree. Yet it is a fact that they were first brought into homes at a time of fear. And primitive man thought that they harbored beneficent spirits. In the North, primitive man watched with mounting terror the decline of the life-giving sun. Lengthening winter nights carried the threat of unending cold, darkness and hunger. Frozen fields held no promise of another harvest. Fruit trees stood bare, apparently lifeless, deserted by the spirits. Alone in the bitter cold and gloom, the evergreens stood as a document of faith in the revival of the sun god and the return of Iight and life to the frozen world. Living conifers in tubs were brought indoors to prop the householders' courage and to shelter the sylvan spirits. These earliest trees of the winter solstice ritual were not ornamented. They were a testament of life, not mere decoration. The frivolous elements in the social observance of the Christmas holidays came not from the North but from the Mediterranean countries. In Rome, the celebration of the winter solstice was an imagined return to the simplicity and brotherly goodwill of the Golden Age. During the week of the Saturnalia which began on Dec. 17, all class distinctions and rules of decorum were suspended. No official business was transacted, children were released from school and truces were imposedon battlefields. Houses and public buildings were garlanded with flowers and evergreens. Gifts were exchanged, feasts were rampant and masks and mummery roamed the cobbled streets.