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Elizabeth Freeman was brought to a house in Sheffield, Massachusetts in 1758 as a teenager. She helped keep the fires going. She cleaned, cooked and served.
12/21/2020 at 3:42 PM Posted by Kevin Edward White
By Dave Armstrong, Patheos, December 12, 2020
Catholic Encyclopedia (“Christmas”, 1908, C. C. Martindale):
[T]he tradition that trees and flowers blossomed on this night is first quoted from an Arab geographer of the tenth century, and extended to England. In a thirteenth-century French epic, candles are seen on the flowering tree. . . . the Christmas tree [was] first definitely mentioned in 1605 at Strasburg, and introduced into France and England in 1840 only, by Princess Helena of Mecklenburg and the Prince Consort respectively.
Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. Some built Christmas pyramids of wood and decorated them with evergreens and candles if wood was scarce. It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree.
(Image: Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash.com)
It appears that virtually all who look into the origin and Christian symbolism of Christmas trees trace the first overt example to St. Boniface (bet. 672-679 to 745 or 755). The story he is most famous for (related to the evangelization of Germany) is his Elijah-like cutting-down of the sacred oak tree of the thunder-god Thor, around the year 725 AD, at Geismar, near Fritzlar in the Hesse region (without being struck down by the same Thor), leading to the conversion of many to Christianity
Much less known is the legend (
not included in St. Willibald’s biography from the 8