One of the earliest legends of the Christmas tree is told about St. Wilfrid, a bishop born about 634 in Northumberland in what is now England.  Most of the people he served were not Christians, but Druids.  They worshipped oak trees and held all their sacred ceremonies in oak groves.  On stone tablets in the grove, they offered sacrifices, sometimes human sacrifices. Wilfrid went about preaching Christ crucified, and many Druids came to believe in the risen Lord.  But they found it hard to leave the old ways behind.  One day, it is said, Wilfrid was with a crowd of newly baptized Christians in an oak forest.  He took an ax and chopped down a giant oak tree.  This must have been shocking for the people watching.  Even if they no longer believed that oak trees were gods, they were still used to seeing them reverenced, not cut down. 

The shepherd’s crook, representing the Nativity’s first witnesses and Christ the Good Shepherd, inspired the candy cane.  Its alternating white and red stripes represent the Lord’s purity and sacrifice, even as the same colors do liturgically. It’s lively peppermint flavor stands for the royal gift of spice.  Finally, like the Body of Christ itself, the candy cane is given to be broken and shared. 

The story of the first creche comes from the life of St. Francis of Assisi. In December 1223, Francis was visiting Grecio, a town in the mountains of Italy. He realized that the local Franciscan hermitage was too small to hold the people who wanted to celebrate Christmas Eve Mass.  So, Francis found a rock cavern, before which he placed a stone altar for the priest.  Inside the cavern, before which he placed a live ox and donkey amid piles of hay.  It is said that the worshippers saw the infant Jesus lying there, though Francis had brought no baby to the scene, and the infant’s holiness shone through him and fell upon those gathered in the darkness. 

Christian pilgrims began going to the place where Jesus was born as early as the second century.  The Roman empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, built a church over the site in AD 339, and it was called the Church of the Nativity.  When war came to Bethlehem several centuries later, Persian soldiers invaded the church to destroy it.  According to Palestinian legend, the soldiers saw a painting on one wall of the church.  It showed the magi, the Three Kings, all in Persian dress,  The soldiers retreated, and many of the elaborate floor mosaics were spared. They can be seen today in the Church of the Nativity, rebuilt on the same site in AD 565 by the emperor Justinian. 

Hymns and songs such as O Come, O Come, Emmanuel are sung.  Christmas carols not only remind us of the meaning of the feast, but the melodies fill our hearts with the memories, the feelings, the experience of Christmas. It is fitting to stop our busy preparations from time to time to savor the holy songs of the feast.  These activities encourage hearing Christmas carols as prayer.