Part 24 (1/2)

In Norway also two lights were placed on the table.{29} All over the Scandinavian lands the Yule candle had to burn throughout the night; it was not to be extinguished till the sun rose or--as was said elsewhere--till the beginning of service on Christmas Day. Sometimes the putting-out had to be done by the oldest member of the family or the father of the household. In Norway the candle was lighted every evening until New Year's Day. While it foreshadowed death if it went out, so long as it duly burned it shed a blessing with its light, and, in order to secure abundance of good things, money, clothes, food, and drink were spread out that its rays might fall upon them. The remains of the candle were used in various ways to benefit man and beast. Sometimes a cross was branded with them upon the animals on Christmas morning; in Sweden the plough was smeared with

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the tallow, when used for the first time in spring. Or again the tallow was given to the fowls; and, lastly, in Denmark the ends were preserved and burnt in thundery weather to protect the house from lightning.{30} There is an a.n.a.logy here with the use of the Christmas log, and also of the candles of the Purification (see Chapter XVI.).

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CHAPTER XI

THE CHRISTMAS-TREE, DECORATIONS, AND GIFTS

The Christmas-tree a German Creation--Charm of the German Christmas--Early Christmas-trees--The Christmas Pyramid--Spread of the Tree in Modern Germany and other Countries--Origin of the Christmas-tree--Beliefs about Flowering Trees at Christmas--Evergreens at the Kalends--Non-German Parallels to the Christmas-tree--Christmas Decorations connected with Ancient Kalends Customs--Sacredness of Holly and Mistletoe--Floors strewn with Straw--Christmas and New Year Gifts, their Connection with the Roman _Strenae_ and St. Nicholas--Present-giving in Various Countries--Christmas Cards.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

From an engraving by Joseph Kellner.]

THE CHRISTMAS-TREE.

The most widespread, and to children the most delightful, of all festal inst.i.tutions is the Christmas-tree. Its picturesqueness and gay charm have made it spread rapidly all over Europe without roots in national tradition, for, as most people know, it is a German creation, and even in Germany it attained its present immense popularity only in the nineteenth century. To Germany, of course, one should go to see the tree in all its glory. Many people, indeed, maintain that no other Christmas can compare with the German _Weihnacht_. ”It is,” writes Miss I. A. R. Wylie, ”that childish, open-hearted simplicity which, so it seems to me, makes Christmas essentially German, or at any rate explains why it is that nowhere else in the world does it find so pure an expression. The German is himself simple, warm-hearted, unpretentious, with something at the bottom of him which is childlike in the best sense. He is the last 'Naturmensch' in civilization.” Christmas suits him ”as well as a play suits an actor for whose character and temperament it has been especially written.”{1}

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In Germany the Christmas-tree is not a luxury for well-to-do people as in England, but a necessity, the very centre of the festival; no one is too poor or too lonely to have one. There is something about a German _Weihnachtsbaum_--a romance and a wonder--that English Christmas-trees do not possess. For one thing, perhaps, in a land of forests the tree seems more in place; it is a kind of sacrament linking mankind to the mysteries of the woodland. Again the German tree is simply a thing of beauty and radiance; no utilitarian presents hang from its boughs--they are laid apart on a table--and the tree is purely splendour for splendour's sake. However tawdry it may look by day, at night it is a true thing of wonder, s.h.i.+ning with countless lights and glittering ornaments, with fruit of gold and s.h.i.+mmering festoons of silver. Then there is the solemnity with which it is surrounded; the long secret preparations behind the closed doors, and, when Christmas Eve arrives, the sudden revelation of hidden glory. The Germans have quite a religious feeling for their _Weihnachtsbaum_, coming down, one may fancy, from some dim ancestral wors.h.i.+p of the trees of the wood.

As Christmas draws near the market-place in a German town is filled with a miniature forest of firs; the trees are sold by old women in quaint costumes, and the shop-windows are full of candles and ornaments to deck them. Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in her ”Home Life in Germany” gives a delightful picture of such a Christmas market in ”one of the old German cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open places are covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it....

The air is cold and still, and heavy with the scent of the Christmas-trees brought from the forest for the pleasure of the children.

Day by day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you go to the market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only a few trees left out in the cold. The market is empty, the peasants are harnessing their horses or their oxen, the women are packing up their unsold goods. In every home in the city one of the trees that scented the open air a week ago is s.h.i.+ning now with lights and little gilded nuts and apples, and is helping to make that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine forest, wax

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candles, cakes and painted toys, you must a.s.sociate so long as you live with Christmas in Germany.”{2}

Even in London one may get a glimpse of the Teutonic Christmas in the half-German streets round Fitzroy Square. They are bald and drab enough, but at Christmas here and there a window s.h.i.+nes with a lighted tree, and the very prosaic Lutheran church in Cleveland Street has an unwonted sight to show--two great fir-trees decked with white candles, standing one on each side of the pulpit. The church of the German Catholics, too, St. Boniface's, Whitechapel, has in its sanctuary two Christmas-trees strangely gay with coloured glistening b.a.l.l.s and long strands of gold and silver _engelshaar_. The candles are lit at Benediction during the festival, and between the s.h.i.+ning trees the solemn ritual is performed by the priest and a crowd of serving boys in scarlet and white with tapers and incense.

There is a pretty story about the inst.i.tution of the _Weihnachtsbaum_ by Martin Luther: how, after wandering one Christmas Eve under the clear winter sky lit by a thousand stars, he set up for his children a tree with countless candles, an image of the starry heaven whence Christ came down. This, however, belongs to the region of legend; the first historical mention of the Christmas-tree is found in the notes of a certain Strasburg citizen of unknown name, written in the year 1605. ”At Christmas,” he writes, ”they set up fir-trees in the parlours at Strasburg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold-foil, sweets, &c.”{3}

We next meet with the tree in a hostile allusion by a distinguished Strasburg theologian, Dr. Johann Konrad Dannhauer, Professor and Preacher at the Cathedral. In his book, ”The Milk of the Catechism,” published about the middle of the seventeenth century, he speaks of ”the Christmas- or fir-tree, which people set up in their houses, hang with dolls and sweets, and afterwards shake and deflower.” ”Whence comes the custom,” he says, ”I know not; it is child's play.... Far better were it to point the children to the spiritual cedar-tree, Jesus Christ.”{4}

In neither of these references is there any mention of candles--the

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most fascinating feature of the modern tree. These appear, however, in a Latin work on Christmas presents by Karl Gottfried Kissling of the University of Wittenberg, written in 1737. He tells how a certain country lady of his acquaintance set up a little tree for each of her sons and daughters, lit candles on or around the trees, laid out presents beneath them, and called her children one by one into the room to take the trees and gifts intended for them.{5}

With the advance of the eighteenth-century notices of the _Weihnachtsbaum_ become more frequent: Jung Stilling, Goethe, Schiller, and others mention it, and about the end of the century its use seems to have been fairly general in Germany.{6} In many places, however, it was not common till well on in the eighteen hundreds: it was a Protestant rather than a Catholic inst.i.tution, and it made its way but slowly in regions where the older faith was held.{7} Well-to-do townspeople welcomed it first, and the peasantry were slow to adopt it. In Old Bavaria, for instance, in 1855 it was quite unknown in country places, and even to-day it is not very common there, except in the towns.{8} ”It is more in vogue on the whole,” wrote Dr. Tille in 1893, ”in the Protestant north than in the Catholic south,”{9} but its popularity was rapidly growing at that time.

A common subst.i.tute for the Christmas-tree in Saxony during the nineteenth century, and one still found in country places, was the so-called ”pyramid,” a wooden erection adorned with many-coloured paper and with lights. These pyramids were very popular among the smaller _bourgeoisie_ and artisans, and were kept from one Christmas to another.{10} In Berlin, too, the pyramid was once very common. It was there adorned with green twigs as well as with candles and coloured paper, and had more resemblance to the Christmas-tree.{11} Tieck refers to it in his story, ”Weihnacht-Abend” (1805).{12}

Pyramids, without lights apparently, were known in England before 1840.

In Hertfords.h.i.+re they were formed of gilt evergreens, apples, and nuts, and were carried about just before Christmas for presents. In Herefords.h.i.+re they were known at the New Year.{13}

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The Christmas-tree was introduced into France in 1840, when Princess Helene of Mecklenburg brought it to Paris. In 1890 between thirty and thirty-five thousand of the trees are said to have been sold in Paris.{14}

In England it is alluded to in 1789,{15} but its use did not become at all general until about the eighteen-forties. In 1840 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a Christmas-tree, and the fas.h.i.+on spread until it became completely naturalized.{16} In Denmark and Norway it was known in 1830, and in Sweden in 1863 (among the Swedish population on the coast of Finland it seems to have been in use in 1800).{17} In Bohemia it is mentioned in 1862.{18} It is also found in Russia, the United States, Spain, Italy, and Holland,{19} and of course in Switzerland and Austria, so largely German in language and customs. In non-German countries it is rather a thing for the well-to-do cla.s.ses than for the ma.s.ses of the people.

The Christmas-tree is essentially a domestic inst.i.tution. It has, however, found its way into Protestant churches in Germany and from them into Catholic churches. Even the Swiss Zwinglians, with all their Puritanism, do not exclude it from their bare, white-washed fanes. In the Munsterthal, for instance, a valley of Romonsch speech, off the Lower Engadine, a tree decked with candles, festoons, presents, and serpent-squibs, stands in church at Christmas, and it is difficult for the minister to conduct service, for all the time, except during the prayers, the people are letting off fireworks. On one day between Christmas Eve and New Year there is a great present-giving in church.{20}

In Munich, and doubtless elsewhere, the tree appears not only in the church and in the home, but in the cemetery. The graves of the dead are decked on Christmas Eve with holly and mistletoe and a little Christmas-tree with gleaming lights, a touching token of remembrance, an attempt, perhaps, to give the departed a share in the brightness of the festival.{21}

The question of the origin of Christmas-trees is of great interest.