The little tree that stood

Riina Kindlam

If you type “first Christmas tree” in an internet search engine and start poking around for the various versions of how, where and when the fragrant little evergreen came to be the focus of our attention, you’re lucky if you come across the date 1441 and Tallinn. You’ll sooner find Riga 1510 (the very first hit in google.ca), Alsace 1521 and Strasbourg 1605.

These are the all presumed dates for the first recorded public display of a decorated Christmas tree - as a Christian symbol, that is. The worshipping of sacred trees was practiced by the Greeks, Romans, Druids, Vikings and most Northern Europeans. You can still visit sacred groves in Estonia today (sing. hiis, pl. hiied), the ones that have managed to slip past the clutches of ski-hill developers and the like. It was natural for all of these cultures to celebrate nature’s turning point of darkness to light that is the winter solstice with evergreens as symbols of the renewing fertility of spring.

The symbol of the tree or similar decorated wooden pyramid shape undoubtedly became most prevalent in Germany. According to legend it was there that St. Boniface (675? – 755 A.D.) the Anglo-Saxon bishop who was sent to Christianize the Germans, came upon a group of pagans ceremoniously gathered around an oak tree. They were most likely worshipping Thor, the Norse god of Thunder. In anger, he cut down the sacred oak and to his amazement a young fir tree sprung up in its place. Through St. Boniface’s teachings the fir (evergreen like Christ’s everlasting light, with embracing boughs and pointing toward heaven), became a sign of Christ and eventually spread to become a world-wide symbol of Christmas.

Devout Christians in Germany may have started bringing decorated trees into their homes in the 16 th century, but their traditions had travelled along the Hanseatic trade routes to places like Tallinn much earlier.

The first tree was most likely the festive gesture of jovial members of the Brotherhood of the Blackheads (Mustapeade vennaskond), uniting single, young merchants and known to have been established in Tallinn just shy of the year 1400. The Brotherhood was unique in Europe, active only in what is now Estonia and Latvia (with 20 members’ houses built in various cities and towns) until the Wismar “branch” was founded in the 17 th century.

Latvian legend has it that Martin Luther, the father of Protestant Reformation himself (1483-1546), was so inspired by twinkling stars seen while walking in a pine forest outside of Riga that he promptly felled the prettiest tree, brought it home and lit candles on its branches to simulate the beautiful sight. That may well be, but there is a more concrete historical account of none other than the men of the Brotherhood of the Blackheads placing a decorated evergreen in the Riga’s Town Hall Square (Ratslaukums) in 1510, decorating it with flowers and setting it on fire! The Blackheads were notorious drinkers among other things, so the event was most likely rooted in revelry rather than piety.

And it happened in Tallinn in 1441. So who exactly gets the ad campaign for “Birthplace of the Christmas tree”…? Chronicler Balthasar Russow later recorded the custom at length in Estonia: in 1584 he describes the tree erected in the market as the centre of dancing, singing and raucous merriment in a very pagan carnival style. It was of course none other than the impending German culture which later “straightened” us and our Christmas traditions out. (A little known fact: composer Richard Wagner wrote one of the world’s most popular yuletide songs, Oh Tannenbaum (Oh Christmas Tree), while living in Riga in 1838.

In 1834 Prince Albert of Saxony decorated the first tree in Windsor Castle for his beloved Queen Victoria. German immigrants had taken the tradition overseas with them long before that, but it was initially considered extremely suspect. The first tree lot opened in New York City in 1851 and President Franklin Pierce brought a Christmas tree into the White House for the first time in 1856. Coca-Cola’s jolly man in red would now have the perfect backdrop.

Reprinted with permission from the newspaper Eesti Elu / Estonian Life, Toronto, Ontario