der+Tannenbaum

Der Tannenbaum Germans usually have real fir trees as Christmas trees. Fir trees have shorter needles than the pine trees we use in Australia and they also stand straighter. The beginning of the tradition of Christmas trees lies in Germany. There are two stories: Over a thousand years ago, a Christian missionary, St Boniface, cut down an oak tree which had been used for pagan worship. According to legend, he was amazed to see a young fir tree growing amongst the roots of the old oak. He took this to be a sign of the strength of the Christian faith. Five hundred years later, the great German religious leader, Martin Luther, is said to have created the first true Christmas tree. The story about hum says that he took a fir tree home and decorated it with candles, which he lit to remind him of the starry sky over Bethlehem on the night Christ was born. People liked the idea of having a brightly lit tree in their homes to help them celebrate the birth of Christ on the usually cold and dark winter’s night of the 24th December. To make the tree even more attractive, people would hang biscuits, buts and fruit on pretty ribbons amongst the branches. Such items would have been a great treat in earlier times when much less was available in shops and families were generally poorer. Later other items appeared to decorate the tree – small, hand-made wooden toys, stars made of straw, and in more modern times, glass and even plastic balls. These days in Germany any one or a combination of these items is found decorating Christmas trees. Germans still prefer real candles to electric lights and you see a great deal more hand-made decorations than herein Australia. The tree is decorated on the 24th December in Germany and families with small children will often try to keep the decorated tree hidden until the celebrations begin on that evening. The parents will light the tree and sometimes a bell is rung to signal that //der Weihnachtsmann// has been and the children may enter. The whole family gathers around the tree, sings carols and shares gifts.