So why do we decorate the Christmas tree?
6. Hagiolatry. When I was working for a US insurance company in Italy a couple of decades ago, a secretary I worked with used to practice her English on me. One day, around Christmas time, she flounced up to my desk and said, “Scotch Pine.”
I met her with a blank expression. I had no idea what she was talking about. She explained in halting English, that in England, the English cut down a Scotch Pine, put it in their house and decorate it with lights and ornaments. Her English was definitely improving and, to cap it all, she was right. The typical Christmas tree is indeed a variety of Scotch Pine, I just didn’t know that.
That was the moment I discovered, to my surprise, that in Italy they don’t put up Christmas trees in the home. In parts of Italy that have a kind of equivalent called a “Ceppo”. It is a tall flat pyramid-shaped structure made of wood with a number of shelves. The outside is decorated with fancy paper and the inside is filled with fruits, nuts and presents. At the bottom of the pyramid is a model of the nativity.
The fruit and nuts are the gifts of the Earth, the presents are the gifts of man and the nativity represents the gift of God. Like a Christmas tree, the top of the Ceppo is usually adorned by an Angel or a star.
And in Italy children don’t get presents on Christmas Day, they have to wait until the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th), except in some areas of Italy, where the British/American tradition has wormed its way in.
Christmas trees were originally just a Northern Europe thing. Protestant tradition has it that Martin Luther initiated the ritual of decorating the trees. One snowy Christmas Eve, he was walking through the woods and was struck by the beauty of a clutch of small evergreens that were covered with snow and shimmering in the moonlight. Returning home, he set up a fir tree indoors and decorated it, adding candles, which he lit in honor of Christ’s birth.
So it was Luther who introduced the Christmas tree as fire hazard and object of decoration. Luther was the father of Protestantism, who launched the reformation and irritated the hell out of the Catholic Church. His famous “Ninety-Five Theses” suggested, among other things, that freedom from God’s judgment of sin could not be bought with money – thus putting a cap on a nice little scam that some Catholics priests were running.
He was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1521,but he burnt the Papal Bull that was sent to him – an extraordinary act of defiance. Then came the Diet of Worms, which was not a helminthoid eating regime, but an assembly of The Holy Roman Empire organized in the hope of making Luther recant. Luther refused to bow down; instead he defended the principles of the Reformation.
The swift triumph of the Reformation was largely due to the fact that printing had been invented. Luther translated the bible into the “language of the people” (German) and the Catholic Church promptly lost its monopoly on the interpretation of the Bible. Game over.
Luther strongly opposed hagiolatry (the worship of saints) and spoke out strongly against the many canonizations that the Catholic church bestowed. He would doubtless have been horrified at being considered a saint or worshiped in any way, although in time Lutherolatry broke out and, ironically, he was referred to as a saint by some of his followers.
It’s strange that children throughout the Protestant world are encouarged to believe in Santa Claus, who is deemed to be St Nicholas, the patron saint of children – as this is hagiolatry of a kind. Or is it? It’s certainly a very powerful myth. But who was the original Sanata Claus? We’ll investigate that in the next posting.
The following are links to all the Xmas words: #1 Hwoelor-tid, #2 Brumalia, #3 Protomartyr, #4 Dulocracy, #5 Pohutukawa, #6 Hagiolatry, #7 Sinterklaas, #8 Prolicide, #9 Apophoret,#10 Kenosis,#11 Psilanthropy,#12 Parepochism
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~ Master Yoda
