The Stranger in the House

WSJ ^ | November 16, 2012

[Alex Murphy]

....it is worth noting that some of the earliest records of the Christmas-tree tradition are to be found among the records of killjoy officialdom. As Bernd Brunner notes in "Inventing the Christmas Tree," the town clerk of Strasbourg, in 1494, put the kibosh on the local "custom of cutting off pine branches at the New Year and bringing them home." By the 16th century the custom was widespread enough to pose some threat of deforestation: In 1554, the city of Freiburg im Breisgau banned the cutting of trees for Christmas.

[SNIP]

The Tannenbaum (which simply means "fir tree") came to be associated, apocryphally or not, with Martin Luther. Because of that, many Catholics in Germany once disdained it. The "aversion of many Catholics went so far," Mr. Brunner writes, "that at the end of the nineteenth century many simply called Protestantism the 'Tannenbaum religion.' " As late as the 1930s, the Vatican was recommending manger scenes instead of Christmas trees as a more theologically sound sort of decoration.

[SNIP]

In the mid-19th century, the Christmas tree made inroads in America, too, a happy byproduct of German immigration. At least most people thought it happy. Not the jingoistic editorialist at the New York Times, who denounced "the German Christmas tree" as "a rootless and lifeless corpse." The trouble, it seems, was that the upstart immigrant tradition had displaced the Christmas stocking as the symbol of seasonal celebration, a change that "has been sincerely lamented by persons of artistic and devout tastes." The New York Times grinched that trees dripped "melted wax upon the carpet" and filled "all nervous people with a dread of fire." They had the "perfume of hemlock" and "should have no place in our beloved land."

[Alex Murphy]

The Tannenbaum (which simply means "fir tree") came to be associated, apocryphally or not, with Martin Luther. Because of that, many Catholics in Germany once disdained it. The "aversion of many Catholics went so far," Mr. Brunner writes, "that at the end of the nineteenth century many simply called Protestantism the 'Tannenbaum religion.' " As late as the 1930s, the Vatican was recommending manger scenes instead of Christmas trees as a more theologically sound sort of decoration....

....the jingoistic editorialist at the New York Times...denounced "the German Christmas tree" as "a rootless and lifeless corpse." The trouble, it seems, was that the upstart immigrant tradition had displaced the Christmas stocking as the symbol of seasonal celebration, a change that "has been sincerely lamented by persons of artistic and devout tastes."

[HarleyD]

The "aversion of many Catholics went so far...that many simply called Protestantism the 'Tannenbaum religion.' " As late as the 1930s, the Vatican was recommending manger scenes instead of Christmas trees as a more theologically sound sort of decoration.

Christmas tree arrives at the Vatican

I guess they surrendered. :O)

[Berlin_Freeper]

“a rootless and lifeless corpse.”

Kind of like a homosexual, except festive.

[JRandomFreeper]

I had a Christmas tree. Once.

I have catz. Catz and Christmas trees go together like gasoline and lit cigarettes, or teenage boys, whiskey and motorcycles.

Chaos waiting to happen.

/johnny

[SaxxonWoods]

Like most early Christian rites, including baptism, the Christmas tree started as a pagan ritual. It was connected with the pagan Feast of Saturnalia, or winter festival.

Adoption of pagan rituals made it easier to convert the populace by using rites they already found familiar.

If you go to St. Peter’s and take the Scavi Tour (2 levels below the main altar), you will tour pagan burial rooms with receptacles built into the floor to receive pagan blood sacrifices.

And so, that which is old becomes new again.

[narses]

Like most early Christian rites, including baptism, the Christmas tree started as a pagan ritual.

Really? Baptism started as pagan?

[narses]

Like most early Christian rites, including baptism, the Christmas tree started as a pagan ritual.

Really? Baptism started as pagan?

[CatherineofAragon]

I remember one cat I had. When he was a kitten, you could walk into the living room in the middle of the night, turn a flashlight onto the tree, and see those little eyes, glowing from the middle of the tree where he’d climbed it.

[narses]

Like most early Christian rites, including baptism, the Christmas tree started as a pagan ritual.

Really? Baptism started as pagan?

[stanne]

Every year, aside from all the fighting over manger scenes and too much on the secular songs, we have to endure this pagan roots crap about Christmas trees.

It is so disingenuous but it is supposed to sound so intellectual.

These are people who probably wouldnd’t visit a white headed member of the family and gain some meaningful family history because old people are “boring stupid and don’t have any acquaintance with reality”, but these people are totally unaware of the goood they could do by touting the pagan roots of abortion which this country promotes at about 1.2 mil PER YEAR just in this country, without even going to the subject of our deporting this ritual whose roots are pagan.

So, excuse me while I KAK!

[thecodont]

I have catz. Catz and Christmas trees go together like gasoline and lit cigarettes, or teenage boys, whiskey and motorcycles.

Chaos waiting to happen.

My cat saw no difference between the tree inside and the tree he climbed ouside.

Down it went.

[AndrewB]