FACTORALY - CHRISTMAS: DAY 4 - TREES

Episode Date: December 28, 2024

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Merry Christmas, Simon. Merry Christmas, Bruce. Welcome to Factorial, everyone. Yes, hello, everyone. This is a special because we are going to be giving you 12 in 12 days, because there are 12 days of Christmas. Indeed, instead of the usual one a week, you get one every single day for the whole 12 days of Christmas. But because it's one a day, they're obviously not as long as they normally are. Indeed. So these are going to be relatively short, relatively punchy, quick little snippets of festive Christmassy informative fun.

Yeah, of course we're going to take a subject every day. Yes. But the subjects will be Christmas relevant. Indeed. So that's the plot. Let's get on with it. Off we go. So what is the Christmassy subject for today's Mini-Factorily, Bruce? Well, today we're going to be talking about Christmas trees. Ah, how lovely.

Or Tannenbaum. Oh, Tannenbaum. As the song says. So, I use Tannenbaum because, as I understand, I mean, we've had Christmas trees for some time, but the decorative sort of bringing the tree in from outside and what have you is very much down to one particular chap. Oh, is it really? Far as I know, it's down to a chap called Albert. Oh, right. Prince Albert, who was Queen Victoria's consort.

That fella. And he brought this tradition over from germany right but um the idea of decorating a tree is quite interesting because it kind of that's the bit that's a bit more pagan yes yeah um the the tree that we use is traditionally a spruce tree not a bruce tree um and spruce was originally the word for Prussian. Oh, really? So it's a Prussian tree? A Prussian tree. How interesting.

They'd certainly been popular in Germany for some time before they came to the UK. So I believe I read that Queen Charlotte, even before Victoria and Albert, Queen Charlotte, who was George III's wife, was the first member of the royal household to bring a tree into the palace and have it decorated. So, you know, by the time Albert brought the thing to the UK, he and Victoria and the whole family were quite used to the idea, but it hadn't come to the UK before then. But there are different variations on this. Again, sort of going back to pagan times,

there was such a thing as a yule tree. It wasn't chopped down and brought inside. It was just a tree outside your house. But they would decorate it with things that represented what they wanted the gods to give them in the following year. So they would hang little ornaments and decorations that represented good health or money. mercedes yes exactly things like that christmas trees as you say we we use a spruce a lovely evergreen tree is um a symbol of the cycle of life and the sort of everlasting

nature of of nature and things like that i like it christmas i i like the smell of them yes i even don't mind the uh the needles dropping okay do they not um antagonize your dog well you see the thing is for the last many years although i do like a christmas tree i like other people to have christmas trees right so i have an artificial tree okay yes you do oh yes of course you do i've helped you put it up you did last year what a what a wonderful piece of equipment that is it's a great tree it looks so realistic yeah yeah although the initially the original artificial trees didn't look quite so realistic yeah yeah although the initially the original um artificial trees didn't look quite so realistic they were basically made from uh dyed goose feathers so you took goose feathers you

dye them green and you kind of like attach them to wires and make them into a sort of a tree shape oh that sounds disgusting i don't know i I mean, you know, people use feathers for, you know, for their boas and things like that, don't they? Yes, I suppose so, yes. That's just a dyed feather. Apparently, some form of tree, I don't know that it was specifically a fir tree that we recognise now, but apparently some trees were used around christmas time even as early as the 15 1600s some say that martin luther was the first person to have lighted candles attached to the branches of a of a tree yes i i used to have a friend who had

their little sort of like clip-on things that you can that's it yeah candles in yeah yeah that's the one. They look terribly dangerous. In medieval Europe, they had something called a paradise play, which was sort of a traditional retelling of the story of Adam and Eve that they did on St. Nicholas Day. And they used sort of what looks like a modern-day bauble, really, a sort of a shiny red ball attached to a piece of string hung on the tree to represent the apple in that story.

I believe that's why Christmas is basically branded as a red and green festival. The green of the tree and the red of the apple. Yes, exactly that. Yeah. So again, I'm not saying that was a Christmas tree. It wasn't. But all of these little traditions come together to sort of make what we know today. Overall, Christmas is appropriated as sort of an old natural festival. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's a conglomeration of everything.

Yule, Saturnalia, wintry solstice-y things. Yes. It's a conglomeration of everything. Yule, Saturnalia, wintery solstice-y things. Yes. Let's all go druid. Well, I guess, you know, that's the reason why you have mistletoe at Christmas. Yes, it is. Yeah. All of the, since we're on the topic of greenery, yeah, all of the greenery, mistletoe, ivy, they're all symbolic of different things. They've all been used as concoctions to increase health or improve fertility or things like that for thousands of years. So, yes, it's all a bit of a mishmash. Yeah. And then, of course, you've got holly, which is that perfect mixture of green and red. Yes, of course. There was also a tradition in Scandinavia of putting strings of popcorn and berries onto trees outside during the winter to feed the birds when they were otherwise finding it difficult to find food. So again, that sort of string of decorative things around a tree has been incorporated into those little beads that you put on a Christmas tree these days. Although not everybody uses

pretty stuff. No. In Ukraine they use cobwebs as a decoration for Christmas. Do they? Yeah. Huh. Didn't know that. How interesting. Well thank you for listening to this Christmas special. Indeed. Thank you very much for coming along. We hope you'll join us again next time for another

fun-filled episode of Fact or Movie. Bye-bye. Au revoir.