Its roots can be traced back 1,300 years, but the custom didn’t take hold until much later.
The origin of the Christmas tree is obscured by the uncertainties of oral history from pre-literacy European cultures. For example, according to Christian tradition, the Christmas tree is associated with St. Boniface and the German town of Geismar. Sometimes in the life of St. Boniface (c. 672-754), he cut down the tree of Thor to refute the legitimacy of the Norse gods at the local German tribe. St. Boniface saw a tree growing in the roots of old oak. Taking this as a sign of Christian faith, he said: “…that Christ is the center of your family… “using the tree as a symbol of Christianity.
The tradition of the Christmas tree as it is known today is relatively young. It was created by Martin Luther Protestant counterpart of the scene of the Nativity Catholic. Luther made the Christmas tree as a symbol of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.
The custom of erecting a Christmas tree can be traced historically to the 15th century Livonia (now Estonia and Latvia) and the 16th century in northern Germany. According to the first documented use of a Christmas tree in Estonia, in 1441, 1442, and 1514 the Brotherhood of Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their fraternity house at Reval (now Tallinn). During the last night of celebrations leading up to holidays, the tree was taken at the Town Hall Square where members of the Brotherhood have danced around him.
In 1584, the pastor and columnist Balthasar Russow wrote a well-established tradition of creating a spruce tree decorated in the market place where young people “went with a flock of young girls and women, first sung and danced there and then set fire tree. ” In this period, the guilds started erecting Christmas trees in front of their guild houses: Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (Marburg professor of European ethnology) found a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570, which tells how a small tree was decorated with apples, walnuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers “and erected in the guild-house, the Children Guild members, who collected the goodies on Christmas Day.
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