"O Christmas Tree!"

German folk song

How many of our readers here guessed, “If the key word this week is evergreen, the song has got to be “O Christmas Tree!” There was another possibility, which I’ll save for later, namely the beautiful “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” and that’s a true hymn, while this one’s an old folk song that was turned, by the addition of a single verse and one word in that verse, into a Christmas carol. But “O Christmas Tree” is a rousing favorite at our house, and it’s been a favorite for a long time, too.

When we lived in Rhode Island, every Christmas we’d invite our closest friends from Providence College, and their spouses and little children, and other of our homeschooling friends, and some of my favorite students, to a Christmas caroling party at our house. That party was a big celebration. We’d often have 40 people attending, and that’s not easy when it’s the middle of winter and everybody has to be indoors. Debra would prepare plenty of good food, especially Christmas cookies (which she’s been making today, as it happens), and after we’d filled our bellies we’d go into the double parlor — with the old-fashioned sliding doors wide open, to sing the carols. Not from our heads, no sir! Debra made up a regular carol-book, with about forty songs in it, and everybody would have a copy, and each song would include all the verses. And they weren’t all in English, either! We sang Adeste, Fideles in Latin. We sang Silent Night in English and in the original German — Stille Nacht. Jessica was in love with traditional Swedish culture and the Swedish language, so we sang Nu tändas tusen juleljus (Now a Thousand Christmas Lights are Shining) in Swedish, after she advised us on how to pronounce the odd vowels. And we sang this one, O Tannenbaum, in German. We did so while Sandra, one of my colleagues and a fine organist, sat at our Canadian reed organ (from the Dominion Organ Company, “mouse-proof” according to the patent pending) and worked the pedals and made that enormous harmonica sound so glorious. On our last such party in that home, we had four organists sharing duties at the pump organ!

I miss those days.

I said that O Tannenbaum was a folk song before it was a Christmas song. So it was, but that requires some explanation. The Tanne is a fir tree, and the fir tree is evergreen, so it was a natural symbol for faithfulness, steadfastness. That’s what German folk songs featuring the Tanne were about. In 1820, a folklorist named August Zarnack, in the great age of German recoverers and compilers of folklore (think of the Brothers Grimm), used the idea for a poem he either cobbled from existing traditions or made up on his own, in which the singer is a young man complaining about the maiden who has turned her heart away from him. The Tanne is faithful, but she isn’t! But a few years later, an organist and hymn-compiler in Leipzig took Zarnack’s poem, changed a few of his words, and added a new stanza, which includes the word Weihnachtszeit, meaning Christmastide, literally the Time of the Sacred Night. In that new context, the faithfulness of the tree suggests the faithfulness of Christ, and the virtues of hope and steadfastness that should dwell in the hearts of all believers.

A bit about the word itself: Old English had two general words for tree. One was treow, the ancestor of our common word; the other was bēam, the ancestor of our word beam, for a plank of wood, and a sort of uncle on the Dutch side of our word boom, for the big wooden spar that extends the sail outward on a ship, and for similar arms on winches and pile-drivers. The odd thing is that our German cousins lost the first word but kept the second, so that now Baum in German is the general word for tree (their word for boom, the spar and not the exploding sound, which is another matter entirely, is Ausleger, literally the out-lier or extender). Yet German has the word treu, a cousin of English true: and both of those words are related to tree. Think of carpentry. To be true, that is, upright and faithful, is to be straight and solid, like a tree. And that’s what our carol is about, isn’t it?

There are a lot of translations and paraphrases of the carol, and they’re, well, all over the place, some still under copyright. So I’ll give the German below, after which I’ll say what it means in English. Have fun with it!

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Join us as a paid subscriber now during our Christmas Special Forever Rate.

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O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum!
Wie treu sind deine Blätter;
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Du kannst mir sehr gefallen;
Wie oft hat nicht zur Weihnachtszeit
Ein Baum von dir mich hoch erfreut.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Du kannst mir sehr gefallen.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Dein Kleid will mir was lehren;
Die Hoffnung und Beständigkeit
Giebt Trost und Kraft zu jeder Zeit!
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Dein Kleid will mir was lehren.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how faithful are your branches!  You are green not only in the summertime, but in the winter when it snows.  O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how faithful are your branches!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, to me you are so delightful!  How often has one of your trees brought me great joy in Christmastime!  O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, to me you are so delightful!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, your dress has something to teach me.  Hope and faithfulness give comfort and strength at all seasons!  O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, your dress has something to teach me.