![saturnalia tree saturnalia tree](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2asux1GSk-0/Vkz8wtW7hKI/AAAAAAAABqo/LP0tp6xDuwI/s1600/1_christmas_star_liights.jpg)
Stories of trees that miraculously bloomed at Christmas multiplied throughout late medieval Europe. At other times, the cross itself was shown in leaf, in fruit or evergreen as the symbol of resurrection: new life sprouting in the winter of the soul. Sometimes a single tree was shown with its branches bare on one side and in leaf on the other. In illuminated manuscripts, frescoes and paintings the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life became emblems, respectively, of the Fall and of the Redemption. To complete the grafting of new Christian faith on to old pagan beliefs, the medieval church began to emphasize the iconic significance of Eden's other tree - the Tree of Life, which, since the expulsion of Adam and Eve, had stood guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. Martin of Tours found it impossible or imprudent to fell a pine customarily hung with votive portraits to pagan gods, he simply had them replaced with little images of the Virgin. Boniface (who waxed exceeding wrathful against Germanic oak tree worship) confronted the pagan oak of Geismar, sacred to Odin, and with the sheer force of his disapproval cleft it in four neat sections, he immediately offset the consternation of the pagans by miraculously transforming the four parts into a new shrine to St. Augustine, then in the process of converting Saxon England, that "from obdurate minds it is undoubtedly impossible to cut off everything at once." So when St. Toward the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great instructed St. But the church's calmer, wiser minds intervened and endorsed the Christianization of tree cults as an aid to piety. Once again there were zealots whose attitude to tree worship began and ended with an axe. By the middle of the fourth century, the basic features of the Christmas calendar were set for good. In the same way, the Kalends were replaced by the Feast of the Epiphany, and the gifts and trinkets that pagan Romans had given each other became instead the homage paid by the three kings to the new King of the World. So the rebirth of the sun became instead the birth of the Son of God, and the bonfires and candles that had greeted the return of daylight were now taken to celebrate the dawning of the Light of the World. Since there was no general agreement about the exact date of the birth of Jesus (Passover was another popular suggestion), it must have seemed helpful to have it supersede the Saturnalia, which petered out on its seventh day, Dec. But, not for the last time, ecclesiastical pragmatism shrewdly prevailed over killjoy zeal. John Chrysostom, urged no compromise with heathen abominations. The attitude of the early church toward all this indecent jollity was predictably frosty. It was during Kalends, when the year changed, however, that gifts were ritually exchanged, often tied to the boughs of greenery that decorated houses during the festivities. The first festival was a time of licensed misrule, often presided over by a lord of merriment, not so much Santa as fat Saturn himself, the orgiast of eating, drinking and other kinds of naughtiness. 17, and the Kalends, which greeted the New Year. The early Church in Rome had a particularly hard battle against two other great pagan festivals, the week-long Saturnalia, which began Dec. Indeed, Christmas itself was superimposed over the ancient festivals that celebrated the winter solstice the change from the depths of darkness, "the world's midnight" as the poet John Donne called it, to the imperceptible increase of daylight. The truth, though, is that the tannenbaum has precious little to do with Christian celebration and a lot to do with the stubborn survival through the millenia of pagan rituals of winter light and rebirth. By the 1830's and 1840's, German immigrants had spread the custom throughout Eastern cities, where Christmas trees, loaded with apples, cookies and the gold and silver strands known as 'angel's hair' (not icicles) decorated homes in Philadelphia and New York. In 1804, soldiers at Fort Dearborn in what was to become Chicago set trees up at their barracks. It did not take long, though, for Americans to adopt the custom, and once again the pioneers were the military. It was homesick Hessian mercenaries, fighting alongside the British and pining for the tannenbaum during the Revolutionary War, who first cut fir crowns and set them on their holiday table, decorated with candles. Sorry, America, but you owe the Christmas tree to King George 3d.