The Giving Counter

A few years ago cable channel AMC used to run an original show called "remember WENN" about a radio station in Pittsburgh in the late 1930s. In one episode the station got a new owner who lost a loved one on Christmas. She decreed that the station would be a "No Christmas" zone. This lead one character to ask, "What's December without Christmas?" The answer - "January".

It is no secret that December is a major month for charities. While buying gifts for family and friends, people are likely to give to needy strangers, also.

With this in mind, a school in Wisconsin put up a "Giving Tree". It was an artificial pine tree with paper mittens on it. On the mittens were gift ideas for charity. Children could take a mitten home and return with a present.

This sounds properly politically correct but there was a problem. The tree had a star at the top. That made it a Christmas Tree. So the school principal hid the star with a bow.

Not good enough. It was still "a symbol of Christianity."

So the tree was taken down and the mittens moved to a counter. The counter is now labeled the "Giving Counter".

Like January, a counter does not inspire much seasonal good will. Besides, isn't charity a Christian virtue? The whole thing should be scrapped. It was too religious to expect anyone to donate to charity in the first place.

It is undeniable that a tree is a symbol of Christmas but is it a Christian symbol? Where did it come from and how did it become part of Christmas?

The anti-Christmas Christians say that it is mentioned in the bible as pagan and dates back thousands of years. While it is true that there is a passage in the bible that mentions decorating a tree, there is no direct connection between the trees. The first modern mention of a Christmas Tree is from the late 16th century.

There is a better explanation. December 24 is Adam and Eve day. In the middle ages it was celebrated by setting up a tree in the church and decorating it with apples, paper roses, and such. They used evergreen trees because an apple tree in December is pretty depressing and because the bible does not actually say it was an apple tree. Because the tree was still up the next day it came to be associated with Christmas.

After Luther and the Reformation, people stopped celebrating most saints' days including Adam and Eve day. Luther liked Christmas so it was still celebrated and many other December customs moved to Christmas. People liked the idea of the tree that had been set up in church and started putting them up at home. This was pretty much confined to Lutheran Germans until the 19th century when an influx of Germans brought the custom to America and Victoria's German husband brought it to England.

Santa and gift-giving have their own strange paths to Christmas but that's more than I want to get into here.

Anyway, the idea that the Christmas Tree is a symbol of Christianity is ignorant. If you don't agree then try bringing out a Christmas Tree at Easter and see how people react.