What a funny idea to cut down a tree and decorate it in your living room. It is an old custom, which comes to us from Antiquity. The evergreen fir tree is seen as an immortal of the forest. It is not subject to the cycle of the seasons and does not lose its leaves. Finally, today, he is losing his thorns because of the heat in the living room, or because of the cat who almost overturns everything, but that’s another thing.
Among the Romans, who celebrated the Saturnalia at that time, by hanging fir branches on the pediments of the doors, they worshiped Janus, the god with two faces, one turned towards the past, the other towards the future. At the end of this year, it makes sense. In Sélestat, 5 centuries ago straight, we find on December 21, 1521 the mention of an expenditure of 4 schillings to pay the guards responsible for monitoring the meyens of the communal forest. In old German, “meyen” designates a festive tree that is decorated as a sign of devotion to the eternal renewal of nature. If that’s not a sign. This account book of the guards is exhibited at the Humanist Library of Sélestat, the city claims the authorship of the Alsatian Christmas tree.
CORN !
A purchase order for fir trees for the parishes of Strasbourg was recently found, 29 years before Sélestat, in 1492! So sorry Sélestat, but until we find even earlier proof, Strasbourg is the city of the Christmas tree, decorated as in the old days, with apples and unconquered osties. Moreover, the trees were hung from the ceiling by the point, so that the mice would not come to nibble the good things in the tree. The tree was not decorated until December 24, in family. And he remained in the Stub until the epiphany, on January 6.