December 22, 2005

Some say that Martin Luther began the tradition of decorating trees to celebrate Christmas in Germany. When Queen Victoria of England married Prince Albert, he brought the tradition with him to Britain, writes Bina Shah


This December I decided to do something that millions of people around the world do at this time of year: I bought a Christmas tree and put it up in my home. I’m not Christian, but I felt that Christmas has become enough of a globalized holiday that anyone can participate in its celebrations. Although Karachi has never seen snow and probably never will, and pine trees are native to mountainous regions, this wasn’t a problem, as a supermarket has a lovely little table where you can get artificial trees of all sizes as well as decorations and other related items.

It’s said that the Christmas tree originated in Germany almost a thousand years ago, when St. Boniface — the saint who brought Christianity to Germany — came across a group of pagans who were worshipping an oak tree in the forest. He became so angry at the pagans that he cut down the tree, but to his amazement, a young fir tree sprang up in its place. The saint took this as a sign of the tremendous power of the Christian faith. However, trees were not brought inside the houses until the 16th century.

Tree worship, however, dates back to much more primeval times than this. The ancient Egyptians worshipped evergreen trees, and with the arrival of the winter solstice, they would put green date palms in their homes to symbolize the triumph of life over death. The ancient Romans commemorated the same winter solstice with a fest called Saturnalia in honour of Saturnus — the god of agriculture — decorating their houses with green lights and exchanged gifts and coins for prosperity, pastries for happiness, and lamps to light one’s journey through life.

In Great Britain, before the advent of Christianity, wood priests called Druids also used evergreens in their mysterious winter solstice rituals. They used holly and mistletoe as symbols of eternal life and put evergreen branches over their doors to keep evil spirits away.

Some say that Martin Luther began the tradition of decorating trees to celebrate Christmas. According to a book called Christopher Radko, The First Decade, “One crisp Christmas Eve, about the year 1500, he was walking through snow-covered woods and was struck by the beauty of a group of small evergreens. Their branches, dusted with snow, shimmered in the moonlight. When he reached home, he set up a little fir tree indoors so he could share this story with his children. He decorated it with candles, which he lighted in honour of Christ’s birth.”

The Christmas tree had become very popular by the 19th century in Germany, where the Germans would decorate their trees with beautiful hand-blown glass ornaments. When Queen Victoria of England married Prince Albert, he brought the tradition with him to Britain, from where it became wildly popular with British subjects who wanted to have their own Christmas trees to show loyalty to their Queen.

The Christmas tree came to the United States with the Hessian troops who fought in the American war of independence and with German peasants who emigrated to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Puritans in New England banned Christmas at first because of its ties to the pagan traditions, but by the time of the Great Depression, farmers who couldn’t sell their evergreen trees for landscaping were cutting them down and putting them for sale in Christmas tree markets.

Presently, the Christmas tree is an inseparable part of Christmas celebrations all over the world. Six species of fir trees make up about 90 per cent of the nation’s Christmas tree trade in the United States.

Trees are decorated with sparkly ornaments, tinsel, chocolate coins, candy canes, strings of popcorn, twinkling Christmas lights, and a star or an angel at the top. Children love to participate in the decorating of the tree, and the best part of Christmas is to see the children awake on Christmas morning –– often at sunrise –– and running downstairs to see their presents stacked underneath the tree.

In London, the most famous tree is set up in Trafalgar Square near Lord Nelson’s statue –– a gift from the people of Norway thanking the British for allowing King Haakon to live in England during World War II. However, probably the most famous Christmas tree (that I can think of, at least) is the one in New York City, set up in Rockefeller Centre. This tree was first put up in 1931 and first lit in 1933.

Today, the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Centre has become a huge event. This tree has to be gigantic: at least 65 feet tall and 35 feet wide, and it’s lit with thousands of lights every Christmas, providing a focal point for Christmas celebrations in New York, with carol singing and other Christmas-related activities taking place in Manhattan around the tree.

My tree isn’t going to break any records being only three and a half feet tall, but I had another purpose for my Christmas tree: to ask the friends from all over the world to send me a small ornament each, so that this would be a truly global tree. I wanted it to represent the friendships I’ve made with people of all the races and religions.

So I took a picture of my tree and sent it out in an email with a request for my friends to send me something very small in the mail so that it could be placed on the tree. I joked that the tree would be non-denominational and that I would love to put a crescent, a cross, and a Star of David on the top. After all, Jesus is one of Islam’s prophets, and December 25 this year marks the start of Hanukah, so why not celebrate all three religions at the same time?

Everyone thought it was a fantastic idea, and I immediately got promises from people for ornaments from as far as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Morocco! Just a few days ago, a friend sent me a beautiful flower ornament, a star, and a rocking horse from Switzerland, and I’m eagerly anticipating the rest of the ornaments, hoping that they will come in before December 25.

But the best surprise of all was when a friend of mine in Kentucky wrote to me to let me know that she had designed an ornament to top my tree, to the exact non-denominational specifications that I had joked about. Wrote Rhonda, “As you can see, it’s a doll — not quite the traditional angel, but similar. She is wearing an approximation of a burqa, in white satin. I’m well aware that in some countries, the symbolic meanings of black and white are reversed. This leaves it open to the viewer’s interpretation, and was deliberately chosen so.

“She has at her feet a blue (for serenity and the essence of water) banner bearing the cross, crescent, and Star of David. But she also bears a tuft of white down feathers, symbolic of spirit or air. The gold and silver are for earth and fire, which must unite to create any form of metallic purity. The ‘wings’ could also be a banner — it’s up to the beholder to decide.

“Thus the doll was made with many beliefs in mind, not all strictly religious, and some of those were far older than most contemporary beliefs/religions. The sum total equals ‘peace on earth’ as nearly as I could conceive it in short order.”

Now this, to me, is the spirit of Christmas, and this is exactly what I hoped to achieve by participating in this ritual. It made me feel so happy that people ‘got it’; the idea of the world getting together to celebrate a happy time is one that apparently resonates with everyone, regardless of where they come from or what they believe in. So enjoy your holidays, and let’s hope that ‘peace on earth’ could become a distinct possibility in 2006.

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