...in the medieval West, December 24th was kept as the commemoration of Sts. Adam and Eve. Loehe still observed it this day in his almanac. And often on this day in the years before the Reformation, there was a pageant that enacted the story of the fall. An evergreen would be decorated with apples to symbolize the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Later, white wafers were even hung upon the tree to symbolize the fruit of another Tree, the Tree of the Cross, on which Jesus would give Himself as the Bread of Life (origin of the Slovak oplatki?). What have we here?
Meet the ancestor of today’s Christmas tree.
St. Paul’s in years past, used to have two Christmas trees in front. One decorated in red, and one in white, both to symbolize the same reality, how the old Adam and Eve brought in death and how the new Adam and Eve (St. Paul, of course, confesses Christ as the new Adam; Irenaeus already saw Mary as a new Eve) restored and surpassed all that our first ancestors lost.
LSB moved the commemoration of Adam and Eve to the 19th of December (maybe under the influence of the Orthodox who observe the Ancestors of Christ on the Sunday before Christmas?), but the connection with Christmas is still close and remains.
1 comment:
Will, perhaps I told you before (please ignore then) but I heard from some Slovak pastors that the custom of Slovak Oplatky formed (perhaps in part, but important part I don't know) because village churches could sometimes not be reached in the winter snows of the end of December. Mountain folk and the like were homebound and thus the priest (among Lutherans also teahers at least later on) took the wafers to the homes before Christmas so that a ceremony recalling the Bread of Life, alluding to Passover bread and the Eucharist, could still take place in a home liturgy with Scripture and carols. Of course the Oplatka was also used in Polish homes and I think White Russians too. It may have been an already borrowed custom when the Slovaks adopted it. I used the two trees with red and white roses and red apples and white hosts in my first parish back in the 1970's but I read about it elsewhere and never heard of it in Slovak circles but then I only knew a few Slovak parishes tho Dad never mentioned it either. Using fruit and nuts to decorate and glass ornaments were the usual things in Slovak homes.
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