THE JOLLY GIFT TREE.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1921, Page 10

THE JOLLY GIFT TREE.

SACRAMENTAL ORIGIN. The question of the origin of Christmas trees is of great interest. Though their affinity to other sacraments of the vegetation-spirit is evident, it, is difficult to be certain of their exact ancestry, writes Clement A. Miles in “Christmas its Ritual and Tradition.” Dr. Tille regards them as coming from a union of two elements—the old Roman custom of decking houses with laurels and green trees at the Kalends of January, and the popular belief that every Christmas Eve apple and other trees blossomed and bore fruit. Before the advent of the Christmas tree proper—a fir with lights and ornaments often imitating and always suggesting flowers and fruit —it was customary to put trees like cherry or hawthorn into water or into plots indoors, so that they might bud and blossom aw New Year or Christmas. Even to-day the practice of picking boughs in order that they may blossom at Christmas is to be found in some parts of Austria In Carinthia, girls on St. Lucia’s Day (December 13) stick a cherry branch into wet sand; if it blooms at Christmas their wishes will be fulfilled. In other parts, the branches —pear as well as cherry—are picked on St. Barbara’s Day (December 4), and in South Tyrol cherry trees are stimulated with lime on the first Thursday in Advent so that they may blossom at Christmas. The custom may have had to do with legendary lore about the marvellous transformation of Nature on the night of Christ’s birth, when the rivers ran wine instead of water and trees stood in full blossom in spite of ice and snow. In England there was an old belief in trees blossoming at Christmas, connected with the well-known legend of St. Joseph of Arimathea. When tho saint settled at Glastonbury he planted his staff in the earth and it put forth leaves; moreover, it blossomed every Christmas Eve. Not only the original thorn at Glastonbury, but trees of the same species in other part of England, had this characteristic. When in 1752 the New St vie was characteristic.