THE CHRISTMAS OAK

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 253, 23 December 1940, Page 6

THE CHRISTMAS OAK

Isn't it odd, how completely we have permitted Christmas evergreens to overshadow the Christmas significance of the oak tree! Oaks have a.Yuletide significance to our ancestors' of northern and western Europe that we have forgotten, to a very considerable degree. It is regrettable, too, that we have done so. for some of these ancient oak observances and beliefs were picturesque and meaningful.. Bringing in the Yule log was a mid-winter ceremony that surviyed as long as nouses were heated by open hearths and wood was the fuel. The Yule log was usually an oak log. But when coal began to be substituted, and the closed stoves came in (we have commonsense sceptical old Dr. Benjamin Franklin to thantc for that!), such mass uses of wood fuel passed out. Then came hot-air central heating, and then hot watei and steam, and oil fuel and gas— and - who cares to follow the Yule fire to a tightly closed furnace door in the basement of an apartment house 1 t Oaks figured prominently, too, in the ancient Celtic rites of the mistletoe, for the mistletoe shrub is a semi-parasite that gains part of its ' nourishment from the sap of hardwood trees, again usually oaks, at least in European woods. To be sure, there are mistletoe species that grow on evergreens, but nobody except a botanist would recognise them as such. And the girls don t want to receive Yuletide attentions exclusively from botanists ! Oaks even helped to provide the Christmas feast, for the mighty wild boar, whose smoking head burdened many a castle'.s high table at Yuletide, fed on jtorns and beechnuts in the forests. And acorns, ground into flour, sometimes kept famine at bay when there had been a l*ad green crop. Oaks provided timbers for houses and castle and cathedral roofs, plank ing and ribs for ships, staves for such housegear as casks and pails. Oak bark Avent into the tanner's

pits to make leather. Oak galls, soaked with scraps of iron, furnished monastery scribes with ink that after centuries remains unfaded. In oaken coffins men were borne at last to the churcli-yard.

Small wonder then that people regarded the ooak so highly, and even in pagen times made a god of it. If oak trees were green in winter like firs and spruces and pines, the chances are that our Christinas trees would all be little oaks.

SONG OF THE TREES Oli, Christmas Tree, Christmas Tree What are you saying, Goodwill and peace! Oh, Christina.'!! Tree, Christmas Tree, What are you hoping, That love shall not cease. M • • • When Santa Clans comes riding, Riding, riding When Santa Ciaus comes riding, Across the .House-top roofs, I know he has some reindeer, Reindeer, reindeer, I know he has some reindeer But I never hear their hoofs. Said old Major Bang of Bengal, "I don't like this Christmas at all; What's the use ol a feast, When the wind's in the East, And your jjension's uncomfortably small!" m m m m The turkey exclaimed with a cheer, "They tell me that Christmas is near; With fun and good fare, Well—l shall be there." He'll meet some "Backbiters, n I fear.