Christmas Traditions: The Tree

Origins of the Christmas tree

Let's go to the Christmas tree. The custom of bringing it into homes and public places is much younger than that of the nativity scene . The trees are loaded with great symbolism in most human cultures. When they rise to heaven, they are like big fingers pointing to the divine. His green foliage suggests life. In the different cosmogonies always seem to play an important and even decisive role, but also remember the Greek myths, the tree with the apples of the Hesperides and the one in which the Golden Fleece was hung. The Hindus and Persians had their respective trees paradise and Salvíficos. The Germans believed that the universe was supported by a large tree, in which the Sun, Moon and stars hanged (possible origin of the custom of putting lighthouses in the Christmas tree). For this reason they regarded the forests as sacred, in which they believed that their deities were manifested, to which they offered human sacrifices at the foot of trees like oak.

St. Boniface, Missionary Monk of the 8th century who evangelized Germany (of which he is considered an apostle) because he believed that it was impossible to uproot the pagan beliefs of the Germans, decided to Christianize them. He banished the custom of human sacrifices and gave a new meaning to the trees, which are the source of life and not of death, in relation to God, who gives food and shelter to his creatures. He chooses the FIR as the best that suggests Christian ideas: its triangular shape reminds the Trinity and its eternal green foliage symbolizes eternal life. It is believed that he proclaimed it as a "Baby Jesus Tree" and that it was begun to celebrate Christmas among the newly rebuilt pagans. Another tradition is that of the monk Winfred, a contemporary of St. Boniface, who would have opted for an oak and not a fir tree.

The use of the Christmas tree, however, was not implanted as we know it until the seventeenth century (the Protestants claim that the initiator was Luther). The truth is that only from the nineteenth century the Scandinavian countries and Germany were divided by Austria and Poland. Britain was taken by Queen Victoria's wife, who was a German prince. At the same time-in the middle of the years 1980-he settled in France and a little later in the United States. In Spain and Italy, the Christmas tree dates from the twentieth century, and it was well entered. Instead, it was previously made popular in Latin America by the influx of North Americans. Today, even the pope places a monumental tree on the Plaza de San Pedro in Rome, which serves as sanctuary for the Nativity Scene.

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