5. Pohutukawa. The pohutukawa is the Christmas tree, in the sense that it is the only tree that is actually named “Christmas tree.” But of course it isn’t the original Christmas tree, it’s a Johnny-come-lately-Xmas-tree available only in New Zealand.
The original Christmas trees are the holly and the oak. To the Druidic Celts, the holly symbolized the waning sun, which started with the summer solstice, and the oak symbolized the waxing sun, which began with the winter solstice. So the holly gives way to the oak at Hwoelor-tid and vice versa at the summer solstice.
The oak was also the most important tree in the forest. All pagan religions had a deal of respect for trees, but the Druids were crazy about them. There was a tree pantheon and they even a tree alphabet. Of the trees, the Oak, the Ash and the Thorn were most revered.
This Druidic obsession did not sit well with the Christians, but what to do?
St Boniface, who is primarily renowned for converting Germany to Christianity, solved the problem. He encountered a group of pagans worshiping an Oak tree. Refusing to accept such unchristian behavior, he took an axe and cut it down. To his amazement, a fir tree sprang up from the roots of the felled oak.
St Boniface took it as a sign from God. Firs were OK, and coincidentally they didn’t rank highly in the Druidic hierarchy of revered trees. St Boniface was later martyred by a group of angry villagers is Frisia (North Western Germany) who took issue with is obsessive habit of desecrating their shrines and chopping down their sacred trees. St Boniface is the protomartyr and patron saint of Germany. He also ought to be the patron saint of lumberjacks, but he isn’t.
People in Northern Europe had long been in the habit of decorating their homes at Hwoelor-tid with sprigs of holly, for the simple and practical reason that it was the most colorful thing around at that time of year. Some even brought small fir trees into their homes. The Christians could happily approve of this tradition because the holly could represent the blood of Christ and its leaves could symbolize the crown of thorns. And as for the fir tree, why it just honored St Boniface-of-the-axe.
All of that has little to do with pohutukawa, or metrosideros excelsa as botanists are wont to call it. You’ll know this word if you’re a New Zealander because that’s where the pohutukawa comes from – but you might simply refer to it as the Christmas tree, because that’s what the first settlers took it to be.
The tree has dark green leaves and deep red flowers, which speak of Christmas, and it blooms in warm Southern Hemisphere months of December and January. It is particularly prolific on the coast, happily growing on bare rocks and on beaches. Indeed, “pohutukawa” is Maori for “splashed by spray.”
The tree has become a natural part of the local Christmas tradition, appearing on greeting cards and mentioned in Christmas poems and songs. For the want of holly, early settlers in New Zealand naturally took to decorating their homes and churches with the branches from the tree. Missionaries even held services under the pohutukawa.
In Maori legend, the pohutukawa is revered for a different reason. Legend has it that Tawhaki, a young Maori warrior, seeking to avenge the death of his father, tried to ascend to heaven to get help by climbing the vines that form the pathway into the sky. Sadly, like Icarus, he fell to earth and the crimson flowers of the pohutukawa took the color of his blood.
That is one version of the legend, but the New Zealand Maoris have an unusual attitude to such legends. Each tribe has its own version of the story and even within those versions, the story told by each storyteller within a tribe might be different. Thus another version has it that it was not Tawhaki that fell to earth but his younger brother Karihi. Either way, the beautiful red flowers of the pohutukawa, like the berries of the holly, symbolize blood.
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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~ Thomas Jefferson
