THE- CHRISTMAS TREE.

Auckland Star, Volume 304, Issue 304, 23 December 1926, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE- CHRISTMAS TREE.

WHO INVENTED IT? Recent researches in to the origin of the Christmas tree habit which attempted to connect it with pre-Christian rites of midwinter festivities have been unsuccessful. The earliest mention of a Christmas tree is not older, in fact, than the middle of the seventeenth century. An old engraving of the eighteenth century has now been discovered and published, which gives the earliest known representation of a Christmas distribution of gifts. It is a Nuremberg picture, entitled. ''Christmas Gifts." or "The Blessed Morn,"' and shows a tree, apparently a birch, standing in a corner of a room. It is but sparsely decked with branches, and some of the foliage might be artificial. A figure of an angel, surrounded by three lights and bearing two in the hands, hangs in the tree, but there are no candles on the tree itself. The use of the fir tree in this connection is. therefore, still to seek. Almost every country claims the honour of having given "the Christmas tree to the world. France's claim runs as follows: In the thirteenth century, a certain hero found a tree whose branches were hung with candles, some upright, some reversed, and on whose topmost bough was a child with a halo round his curly head. The Pope was asked for an explanation of this phenomenon. He declared that the tree represented mankind, the child the Saviour, and the candles the good and bad people. Germany has, of course, many legends connected with tlie Christmas tree." One of the oldest makes St. Winifred responsible for the Yuletide tradition that brings joy to so many little lives. It states that the venerable Saint was one day surrounded by a group of his disciples, and he began to hew down a mighty oak. which had once been the object of Druidic worship. As he was in the act of doing so. there sprang up a tremendous gale, which gripped the oak and caused it > fall. Out of the centre sprang a young fir tree, whose branches seemed to be outlined with shining stars.