Good natured: Why is there a tree in my house?

We do it every year … and we do it with a great anticipation. This anticipation, which I fully blame on the brainwashing of retailers who display Christmas items in August, now presents itself the weekend before Thanksgiving, which, of late, has been a holiday spent away from home. Nonetheless, a lit and adorned Christmas tree stands ready in the corner of our family room, silent and still, patiently waiting for our post-Turkey Day return. While it does shine a festive light on our family Christmas season, it does get stripped and shunned to a dark basement corner come New Year's Day. Such is the life of an artificial Christmas tree. At some point each year, I start to wonder how on earth this conical piece of green plastic and metal came to be the keystone of Christmas, and saying this is indeed sacrilegious, but considering the fact that many more people erect Christmas trees than Nativity sets, it is what it is. As everyone surely knows, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ, the Son of God. The Gospel stories of the Jesus's birth align to give a faithfully detailed account of this historic event. None of the stories mention decorating the nearby Aleppo pines, which is the common pine of the region, and because of the region's climate, a pine that rejects the classic conical shape associated with a modern Christmas tree. So, just how did the connection of needle-leafed conifers not only become associated with Christmas, but become the icon of the season? Well, let's just say that a lot of "authorities" have a lot of thoughts. Right off the bat, a large number of sources believe that using evergreens, in full or part, predates the birth of Christ. Moreover, many evergreen traditions are associated with paganism. In association with the modern date of Christmas, the most obvious seasonal event is the winter solstice, more simply, the start of winter. In the most extreme example, it could be as simple as "let's celebrate now before the winter freezes us to death." Evergreens were always thought to be plants that defied the seasons, so making them the poster child of such celebrations makes great common sense. While pagan beliefs predated the time of Christ, they didn't disappear fully after his life on earth. Perhaps the most held belief was associated with the Avenger Thor. Within northern and central Europe, the idea of Thor -- the god of thunder -- persisted strongly for many centuries after Christ's death and rising. One of the Thorian (I just made this word up) celebrations included decorating a large, deciduous tree in the town's square. In, or about, 723 the English missionary St. Boniface encountered such a pagan ceremony taking place in Germany (or thereabouts). Angered, he found an axe and proceeded to chop the tree down … right in front of the Thorians! Why they didn't stop him seems to be two-fold: 1) He was wielding an axe. 2) They fully believed that Thor himself would strike him down with one of his famous thunderbolts. Thor, who rightfully may have been preoccupied at the moment with some nonsense from Loki, failed to strike down St. Boniface. The stunned pagans took on Christianity straight-away. Somehow, in the immediate aftermath, a nearby evergreen was proclaimed to now be their official "holy tree." (There is no mention of the fate of the felled deciduous tree, but I'm spit-balling it became the town's yule log.) Eight-hundred years later comes another "town square" story that may be the follow-up of St. Boniface's heroic act of lumberjacking. In this tale, local merchants decorated an assumed evergreen with red roses. The roses are said to represent the Virgin Mary. After dancing around the tree for an unspecified time, they set the tree on fire. I am fully thinking that alcohol had to be involved, since burning down a tree full of representations of the Virgin Mary seems a bit blasphemous. At least now the idea of a lit Christmas tree is somewhat established. Another story, this one out of the Middle Ages, tells of the Feast of Adam and Eve. Yes, Adam and Eve had a feast! Adam and Eve Day was officially Dec. 24, and the event was celebrated by decorating an evergreen with edible ornaments, including, of all things, apples. The evergreen represented the Garden of Eden, and the food represented, well, food, probably in the sense of God providing essentials for His people. This was not a Town Square event, and it is alleged that these trees were displayed in participant's homes. (Whether or not they consumed the apples was not clear at press time.) Martin Luther, who, according to Wikipedia, was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor and former Augustinian Friar, is commonly credited with decorating and lighting an indoor Christmas tree. Sometime in early 16th century Germany, Luther celebrated the Christmas holiday by bringing a small pine tree (or a fir or spruce) into his family home. There, he not only decorated it, but he somehow attached candles to its branches and then he lit them. I mean, what could go wrong? (He obviously did not own a house cat.) Somehow … someway, lighting an indoor tree with candles for Christmas became a thing. It took a few centuries, but by the mid-1800s, in-home Christmas trees became the tradition we know today. In the 1880s, electric lights started to replace candles. According to the live Christmas tree industry, "approximately 25-30 million live Christmas trees are sold each year in the United States. Almost all of these come from Christmas tree plantations." Artificial trees need to be mentioned, especially as they related to forest conservation. With live Christmas trees becoming so common, the development of artificial trees was inevitable. But it happened earlier than you might think. Roundabout 1883, the once-famous Sears, Roebuck & Company catalogue advertised fake trees for the unbelievable price of 50 cents for a tree with 33 limbs, and $1 for one with 55 limbs. Wow! The aluminum tree fad came about in the 1950s. Despite this tree's inability to take on electric lights, this segment of the Christmas tree market exploded. No end was in sight, until a short scene from the famous "A Charlie Brown Christmas" TV special brought the whole industry down. Yes, that scene where Charlie Brown picks a very small and sad live tree over the giant forest of aluminum trees on the sales lot. Wow, Charlie Brown … influencer extraordinaire!