The controversy over a tree

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Christmas tree, Piazza Venezia, Rome, Vatican

With the Christmas Season all manners of public Xmas trees are going up in various cities. Some cities go for the big display and a giant tree with loads of lights strategically placed as a symbol of the City, a kind of tourism promotion.

This week in Rome the giant Xmas trees have been unveiled, one at the central Train Station TERMINI by Piazza della Repubblica and another one in the centre of the City at Piazza Venezia. In years past the tree at Piazza Venezia which is located in front of the Altar to the nation was a natural tree, this year it is a metal contraption looking like a big cone. It did not take long for people to criticize the decision of the city, newspapers carried editorials and reporting. In Rome everything is about style and look, it is so important to the Romans.

Xmas tree at the entrance of the Termini Train Station, this one is liked by many, not a natural tree but looks more traditional.

Here is the natural tree at Piazza Venezia in 2016.

Here is the 2017 version of the Xmas tree at Piazza Venezia in front of the Altar to the Nation. It does look like a giant metallic snow cone. Few like it, not stylish and not traditional. After all this is the central piazza of the city, who could be so gauche as to make this choice. You can see how big it is if you look at the people. I really don’t like it much.

Now across the Tiber river on the Vatican hill in the Papal State of the Holy See in Piazza San Pietro in front of the basilica is the Roman Catholic Church’s version of their annual Christmas tree unveiled tonight. For the occasion the bells of St-Peter peal and the Papal band plays military marches, there is usually a pretty good crowd. The ceremony of the unveiling is presided by Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, Governor of the City State of the Vatican.

The tree this year is a gift of the Archdiocese of Elk in Poland.

A more dramatic shot from the colonnade of Bernini looking into the Piazza.

Traditions

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Canada., Christmas tree, Germany, traditions

Some great Christmas traditions we enjoyed through the years, not to forget the Xmas markets during Advent on our visits to Munich.

The first Christmas tree in Canada was lit at Sorel, Québec, in 1781, by Baroness Frederika von Riedesel, wife of the commander of the Brunswick and Hessian troops who fought alongside the British against the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

Major General Friedrich Adolf von Riedesel, was born at Lauterbach, Hesse, Germany, in 1738. In 1776 he landed in Canada in charge of a large contingent of soldiers sent by the Duke of Brunswick to defend Canada and help General John Burgoyne put down the American Revolution. The Baroness, known as “Lady Fritz”, followed in 1777, even though she had two small children and was expecting another.

In October of that year, the Americans captured the von Riedesel family at the Battle of Saratoga. They spent two years in captivity and two further years paroled in the U.S., before they were allowed to return to Quebec. In September of 1781, Governor Lord Haldimand posted the General to Fort Sorel where the Richelieu River flows into the St. Lawrence River. The couple, and their four daughters Augusta, Frederika, Caroline, and America, first lived in a private home, but a few days before Christmas Eve, they moved into a new stone house on the site of the present Maison des Gouverneurs in the town.

On Christmas Eve, Lady Fritz hosted a party of officers, with a traditional Christmas plum pudding for the English, and a small candle-lit Christmas fir tree, its branches decorated with fruits and candies, for the Germans. On Christmas day, her four girls had their “Weihnachtsbaum” and their little gifts under the tree.

 

Martin Luther and family

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Christmas tree, Martin Luther, Reformation

 

In this new header, a popular German artist of the 18th century Carl Schwerdgeburth, painted this scene of the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther and his family around a candle-lit Christmas tree.