l.{21}

* * * * *

The question of the origin of Christmas-trees is of great interest.
Though their affinity to other sacraments of the |268| vegetation-spirit
is evident, it is difficult to be certain of their exact ancestry. Dr.
Tille regards them as coming from a union of two elements: the old Roman
custom of decking houses with laurels and green trees at the Kalends of
January, and the popular belief that every Christmas Eve apple and other
trees blossomed and bore fruit.{22}

Before the advent of the Christmas-tree proper--a fir with lights and
ornaments often imitating and always suggesting flowers and fruit--it
was customary to put trees like cherry or hawthorn into water or into
pots indoors, so that they might bud and blossom at New Year or
Christmas.{23} Even to-day the practice of picking boughs in order that
they may blossom at Christmas is to be found in some parts of Austria.
In Carinthia girls on St. Lucia's Day (December 13) stick a
cherry-branch into wet sand; if it blooms at Christmas their wishes will
be fulfilled. In other parts the branches--pear as well as cherry--are
picked on St. Barbara's Day (December 4), and in South Tyrol
cherry-trees are manured with lime on the first Thursday in Advent so
that they may blossom at Christmas.{24} The custom may have had to do
with legendary lore about the marvellous transformation of Nature on the
night of Christ's birth, when the rivers ran wine instead of water and
trees stood in full blossom in spite of ice and snow.{25}

In England there was an old belief in trees blossoming at Christmas,
connected with the well-known legend of St. Joseph of Arimathea. When the
saint settled at Glastonbury he planted his staff in the earth and it put
forth leaves; moreover it blossomed every Christmas Eve. Not only the
original thorn at Glastonbury but trees of the same species in other
parts of England had this characteristic. When in 1752 the New Style was
substituted for the Old, making Christmas fall twelve days earlier, folks
were curious to see what the thorns would do. At Quainton in
Buckinghamshire two thousand people, it is said, went out on the new
Christmas Eve to view a blackthorn which had the Christmas blossoming
habit. As no sign of buds was visible they agreed that the new Christmas
could not be right, and refused to keep it. At Glastonbury itself nothing
|269| happened on December 24, but on January 5, the right day accor