It’s that time of year again when we have to put on our lumberjack gear and head into the woods to cut down a tree so we can bring it home and stand it in a bucket and put it in the corner of a room. There is a bit of huffing and puffing involved in trying to get the tree through the front door, some scraping of knuckles on the door frame and some cursing when it won’t stand up properly in the bucket. Then there is some trimming involved to stop it from making a hole in the ceiling and to ensure that the family can actually fit into the same room with it.
Then we put lots of small lights on it and hang funny looking ornaments from the branches and we sit back and wait for a large fat man to come down the chimney and leave presents for us all underneath it. Just to put the tin hat on it we leave some milk and biscuits out for the fat man in case he’s hungry.
If you were to look at this logically, you would probably determine that this behaviour is a little bit odd and who could blame you. Try bringing a tree home to your beloved at any other time of the year and telling her that it would look lovely in the sitting room beside the telly and you would probably hear phrases you didn’t think she even knew.
The Paradise Tree
But it is perfectly acceptable at Christmas time and to find out how this came about we have to go back in time a bit. The exact origin of the Christmas tree in unclear but the most likely theory is that it started with medieval plays. Dramas depicting biblical themes began as part of the religious worship and they took place in the outdoors and the Garden of Eden was represented by a “Paradise tree”. The plays were banned in many places when revelers started becoming too drunk and boisterous. By that time some people had taken a liking to the idea of the “paradise tree” so they began to set them up in their homes to compensate for the public celebration they could no longer enjoy outside.
The “Paradise tree” was hung with fruit. Wooden “pyramids” lined with shelves would be placed next to the tree and candles would be placed on the shelves, one for each member of the family. It is quite probable that these candles ended up on the tree itself and then went on to become our present day Christmas tree lights and ornaments.
There is another theory about the introduction of the Christmas tree and it concerns an event that occurred on a cold Christmas Eve night. A forester and his family were in their cottage and were gathered round the fire to keep warm when there was a knock on the door. When the forester opened the door, he found a poor little boy standing on the door step, lost and alone. The forester welcomed him into his house and the family fed and washed him and put him to bed. The next morning, Christmas morning, the family was woken up by a choir of angels, and the little boy had turned into Jesus.
Jesus went into the front garden of the cottage and broke a branch off a Fir tree and gave it to the family as a present to say thank you. I’m not sure how he thought that this was going to impress the family but he obviously believed in “It’s the thought that counts” motto. In any event, it is said that people have remembered that event by bringing a Christmas tree into their homes.
Wassailing
Wassailing is another tradition that was popular at the time. It’s often described in innocuous and sometimes nostalgic terms and it is still practiced in some parts of Scotland and Northern England on New Year’s Day. It’s also known as “first footing“. Wassailing was associated with rowdy groups of young lads who would call to the homes of wealthy neighbours and demand free food and drink. If the householder refused, he was usually cursed, and occasionally his house would be vandalised.
I can remember being in Edinburgh in Scotland one Christmas and an elderly neighbour of the brother-in-law that I was staying with insisted that I had to call to see her and I had to bring a lump of coal with me. In return she would give me a glass of whiskey which seemed like a pretty good deal to me. It had to do with this “First foot” tradition which was supposed to bring good luck to a householder if a stranger called to the house with a knob of coal. So that tradition is still surviving in some parts.
Bah humbug
The exact origin of these customs is open to interpretation but the fact remains that someone came up with the notion that bringing a tree indoors and decorating it would be good fun. Obviously drink had to be involved in that decision and it seems that they could do very little in those days when they were sober. There was lots of drunkenness and fighting and it was common to abuse your neighbours if they didn’t give you food or drink. This crowd just couldn’t behave themselves and it’s because of them that we have to turn our sitting rooms into gardens at Christmas time. It’s thanks to them that I have to risk my life going up to the attic every year to rescue a few thousand Christmas tree lights that will invariably be tangled up and broken. If they had stayed off the drink and copped themselves on a bit then my life would be less stressful. Bah humbug.