rit of
growth lay also beneath the Roman evergreen decorations, so that whether
or not we connect the Christmas-tree with these, the principle at the
bottom is the same.

Certain Christian ideas, finally, besides that of trees blossoming on the
night of the Nativity, may have affected the fortunes of the
Christmas-tree. December 24 was in old Church calendars the day of Adam
and Eve, the idea being that Christ the second Adam had repaired by His
Incarnation the loss caused by the sin of the first. A legend grew up
that Adam when he left Paradise took with him an apple or sprout from the
Tree of Knowledge, and that from this sprang the tree from which the
Cross was made. Or it was said that on Adam's grave grew a sprig from the
Tree of Life, and that from it Christ plucked the fruit of redemption.
The Cross in early Christian poetry was conceived as the Tree of Life
planted anew, bearing the glorious fruit of Christ's body, and repairing
the mischief wrought by the misuse of the first tree. We may recall a
verse from the "Pange, lingua" of Passiontide:--

"Faithful Cross! above all other,
One and only noble tree! |272|
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peer may be:
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
Sweetest weight is hung on thee."

In the religious Christmas plays the tree of Paradise was sometimes shown
to the people. At Oberufer, for instance, it was a fine juniper-tree,
adorned with apples and ribbons. Sometimes Christ Himself was regarded as
the tree of Paradise.{38} The thought of Him as both the Light of the
World and the Tree of Life may at least have given a Christian meaning to
the light-bearing tree, and helped to establish its popularity among
pious folk.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

We have seen that the Christmas-tree may be a development, partly at
least, from the custom of decorating buildings with evergreens at the New
Year, and that such decorations were common throughout the Roman
Empire.[105] Some further consideration may now be given to the subject
of Christmas decorations in various lands. In winter, when all is brown
and dead, the evergreens are manifestations of the abiding life within
the plant-world, and they may well have been used as sacramental means of
contact with the spirit of growth and fertility, threatened by the powers
of blight. Particularly precious would be plants like the holly, the ivy,
and the mistletoe, which actually bore fru