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Several accounts exist regarding the first Christmas tree, with the earliest dating back to 1777. The Pennsylvania Dutch most likely introduced Christmas trees to America. The first documented account is Matthew Zahm, living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1821.
In 1851, a Lutheran pastor by the name of Reverend Henry Schwan would place a Christmas tree inside the Zion Church of Cleveland, Ohio. His actions of bringing a “heathen” tree into the church caused great commotion among his congregation. Henry was instructed to find out the origins of the tree and to remove it from the church if the origins were not Christian. After many interviews, he found that the tradition of the tree was new to Americans; to European immigrants, however, it was a tradition that had been connected to Christianity for centuries though they were not sure why. Henry caught a break when his good friend Reverend Edwin Canfield returned from a trip to Canada. While making inquiries there he ran across a monk who knew of a legend of the tree recorded in a Sicilian monastery in the Middle Ages.
“The legend told of the holy night when Our Lord was born. All creatures came to worship at Bethlehem. And the trees did likewise. None of the other trees came so far as the least among them, a small spruce. It was so weary that it could hardly stand, and the bigger, leafy trees all but obscured it. But the stars took pity on it, and a rain of them fell from Heaven, and the bright
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Christmas star alighted in the top of the spruce. And the Child in the manger saw the spruce and blessed it with a smile.”7 Reverend Schwan was allowed to keep his tree.
Today, the Christmas tree has become more and more secularized. Some American churches have chosen to fight this secularism by displaying chrismon trees in their churches. A chrismon tree is a Christmas tree decorated only with monograms of Christ. The chrismon tree was created by Frances Kipps Spencer in 1957 and placed in the Ascension Lutheran Church in Danville, Virginia, where she attended. The monograms are always white and gold in color so as to not distract the viewer from the meaning of the symbols. If lights are added, the lights are white also.
NATIVITY SCENE (Crèche) – The modern nativity scene (also called a “crèche,” meaning “manger”) helps to tell the story of the birth of Jesus. However, the assembly of characters and animals is not entirely accurate.
The Bible tells us that Jesus was born in a manger (Luke 2:12). The manger was a feeding trough, probably carved out of stone, for feeding and watering the animals. Troughs are found in stables so it was assumed Jesus was born in a stable. Yet some traditions suggest that Jesus was actually born in a cave, not a stable. “From the earliest times, moreover, ecclesiastical writers bear witness to this tradition. Thus St. Justin, who died a martyr in 165, says that ‘Having failed to find any lodging in the town, Joseph |
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