ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE

[Stanley]

ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE

One more Christmas story and I’ll leave you to mend! I was asked the other day whether I had a Christmas Tree and my reply was unprintable. I always liked Christmas Trees until I found out that I had been subjected to manipulation for years. I don’t like manipulation and so I turned against the dreaded Yuletide Tree. Why?

We have to start with St Boniface, this wasn’t his given name, he was born in 675 in Wessex, named Wynfrith and was educated by the Benedictines at Exeter and Nursling (between Winchester and Southampton) They must have done a good job because he became a Benedictine monk, and was ordained a priest by the time he reached 30. Between 716 and 722 he made two attempts to evangelise the Frisian Saxons but was repulsed by their king, Radbod. Frisia was an ancient region of Germany and the Netherlands that lay between the mouths of the Rhine and the Ems. He returned to England to find he had been elected abbot in his absence but declined the post as he wanted to pursue a career as a missionary. He travelled to Rome where Pope Gregory gave him the task of converting the pagans to the east of the Rhine and changed his name to Boniface. Radbod had died by this time so Boniface went to Frisia to help Bishop Willibrord convert the Frisians and in 722 he went to Hesse and founded a Benedictine monastery as a base camp.

He was called to Rome and the Pope made him a missionary bishop and introduced him to Charles Martel who’s protection was essential to his mission. Martel (The Hammer) was Mayor of the place of Austrasia and in effect became the ruler of the Frankish kingdom, roughly equating to modern France. The story goes that when Boniface arrived at Geismar he found the Pagans worshipping Thor under a sacred oak tree where they made human sacrifices. His solution to this was, to say the least, direct. He cut the oak down and replaced it with a fir tree which grew, miraculously at a great pace. He told the pagans that the triangular shape of the tree was to remind them of the three points of the Trinity. This symbol was gradually accepted by the pagans and eventually became a universal symbol of Christmas in what became Germany.

We move on rapidly to George IV in England, leaving Boniface to come to a sticky end at the hands of the Frisians and become a martyr of the church. George IV brought the Germanic symbol of Christmas to England but it never took hold outside the royal family and its sycophants because of the unpopularity of the monarchy. It wasn’t until Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert re-introduced the custom that it took hold in England. From then on it became the universal symbol of Christmas it is today. Some scholars have opined that it was Albert who introduced the concept of candles on the tree to represent the light of Christianity, others point out that the baubles are probably a vestigial representation of the human sacrifices made under the oak of Thor.

So, what have we got? A pagan symbol stolen by the church to reinforce the brainwashing of the Germanic pagans, used again by a German monarchy to cement its place in a foreign country. If you read the history and believe it, it reminds you of human sacrifice, religious domination and monarchical social engineering. So, sorry, no Christmas tree for me. Mind you, I’m not consistent, I wear the kilt and that’s a Victorian con trick as well. I have feet of clay………

SCG/Sunday, 17 December 2000

[Stanley]

Bumped.

[Stanley]

All right it's not in the spirit of Xmas but it's accurate history and so should be remembered!