The Maypole according to Wilhelm Mannhardt

 In order to determine why Dr Mannhardt thought the Christmas tree was related to the maypole I first had to figure out just what a maypole was.  Most of the following information comes from the Maibaum (May tree) chapter in Forest and Field cults.

The maypoles that Mannhardt described in his book were put up at all times of the year: spring, summer, fall and winter.  In fact, he described several different types of maypoles.  The ones we are familiar with are summer maypoles, generally put up in May or for the summer solstice.  Another common maypole was the harvest maypole which was erected at the conclusion of the fall or winter harvest.  There were also maypoles put up for celebrations such as weddings and new house construction.  Old sources refer to them by a few different names including: maypole, May tree, or simply “May or Mayen”.  Occasionally a more prosaic term was used.  For example, in France one of the names it was given was the “harvest bouquet”.

Maypoles were generally made using trees commonly found in forests in the area where it was put up.  Conifers and birch trees were most commonly used.  After the tree was selected and cut down, the lower branches were stripped off leaving the crown intact.  The exposed trunk was sometimes painted or carved.  In some cases whole trees were not used and the maypole consisted of branches that had been lashed together.

Next: maypole traditions and decorations 

The problem with Wilhelm Mannhardt

 Critics or Dr. Mannhardt’s research point out that he recorded the folklore and traditions in Forest and Field Cults in the 19th century, long after heathenism had been extirpated from Europe.  Germany had been converted around 800CE when Charlemagne defeated the heathen Saxons - over 1000 years before Mannhardt’s time.  Lithuania, the last European nation to adopt Christianity did so in the middle of the 14th century, around 500 years prior to Mannhardt.  The possibility was that traditions and folklore he recorded might not have had a heathen origin at all - they may have emerged after conversion and been entirely Christian.  

Despite this problem it is clear, at least in some cases, that he did record traditions rooted in heathenism.  For example, a large section of his book is devoted to traditions involving fire.  In it he describes a rural practice of setting fire to a wheel in the middle of the summer and rolling it downhill.  This practice matches an early 4th century record of heathens rolling a burning wheel down a hill and then reassembling the pieces in their sky god temple.  In this case, Mannhardt likely uncovered the remains of a heathen practice.  It seemed to me that his research must have some value but I decided to avoid the sticky question of whether or not he had uncovered the remnants of pre Christian societies for now.  Instead I went looking to see what he had to say about maypoles.

The Maypole - just what is it?

 I realized that if I wanted to test Mannhardt’s theory that the Christmas tree started out as a maypole that I would first have to figure out just what it was.  I had seen pictures of young women dancing around a flowered pole, holding ribbons that were slowly wrapped around it as the dance proceeded by I had no idea why they were doing that or what it meant.  Wikipedia was of little help on the matter.  It offered theories that the maypole was an expression of happiness that summer had arrived, that it was a tradition that had been started by Iron Age heathens or that it was a (gasp) giant phallic symbol.  Unfortunately, Wikipedia offered little in the way of evidence for any of this so I started trying to figure out just what it was myself.

The first thing I looked at was the name.  I had always assumed that the maypole was called that because it was put up in the month of May.  This turned out to be wrong, although there was a connection between it and May.  Both got their name from the same source: the Greek goddess Maia and was associated with fertility.  The name “maypole” was coined sometime in the 13th century.  This, as it turns out, is well after Northern Europe had been converted to Christianity.  This raised the possibility that the maypole was not, as Mannhardt had indicated, a heathen tradition but one that had been adopted by Christians.  In fact, according to Mannhardt’s research, some maypoles were put up on Christian holidays.  This exposed a serious flaw with his research - Mannhardt believed he was looking at heathen practices that had survived conversion, but the maypole appeared to be a Christian practice that had been developed in the later medieval period when Christianity was widely practiced.  Was it possible he was wrong?

Who was Wilhelm Mannhardt and how did he know anything about Christmas trees and maypoles.

The first question that I had when I read Mannhardt’s theory on the Christmas tree was “who was this guy?”  Wilhelm Mannhardt (1831-1880) was a student of Jacob Grimm - the same Jacob Grimm who had terrorized generations of children with his scary German folk tales.  Mannhardt was an anthropologist.  His main area of interest was folklore and folk traditions as they pertained to pre Christian societies in Europe.  During his lifetime he collected stories and recorded folk traditions throughout Europe.  He sent out thousands of questionnaires on local traditions and recorded the results in a masterwork titled Wald und Feldkultes or “Forest and Field Cults”.  Sadly, he was plagued by poor health his whole life, limiting his research, and died at age 49 before he could complete his work.

I wondered what information Mannhardt had about the maypole which no one else seemed to know.  Quite a bit, it turned out - he was the preeminent expert on maypoles in our modern era and a large section in Forest and Field Cults is dedicated to them.  I decided to look into what he had discovered to see if I could establish a link between the maypole and the Christmas tree.  As I looked at what he said about maypoles I realized that the maypole he was describing was only distantly recognizable compared with what we know as a maypole these days.

Where did the information used in this blog come from?

 I realized early on that I could not use contemporary sources to answer the question of where the tree came from - they were entirely useless.  I decided to try 2 strategies that had not been explored to find an answer as to where the Christmas tree had come from.  Firstly, I would find the earliest records of Christmas trees and try to figure out why people had started putting them up.  This proved to be more difficult than I had expected - there were several trees billed as “the first tree ever”.  Secondly, I started plumbing sources that nobody else had used to try to work out where the tree had come from.  I began reading histories written by Roman and Greek authors, early medieval church records, hagiographies, and the Bible looking for any shred that might tell me about Christmas tree.  I looked at German mythology and folklore as many of the purportedly first Christmas trees come from a region in western Germany on the border with France.  I also looked at some modern research on tree worship in the Middle East and German research on the Christmas tree.  The German research was particularly helpful - the first trees pop up mostly in Germany so there has been a lot of interest there on where it came from.  The information presented in this blog is the result of over 6 years of reading these sources.

While looking at German folklore I came across an explanation for the tree that I had never seen before and I could find nowhere on the internet.  In the late 19th century, a German anthropologist named Wilhelm Mannhardt had hypothesized that the modern Christmas tree had originally been derived from a decorated tree called a “maypole”.  I decided to test his hypothesis.  Following the trail of evidence based on Mannhardt’s research eventually led not only to the origin of the Christmas tree but to a series of monstrous crimes against humanity.  Crimes that had subsequently been covered up and scrubbed from history so that almost no one knows about them - crimes were so vast and impactful that they continue to reverberate, shaping not only the Christmas tree but the modern world around us.

What is this blog and why did I start it?

 I have always been intrigued by the Christmas tree.  It can be found around the world as a popular symbol of Christmas.  There has always seemed to me that there was something missing or wrong about it.  What does a decorated tree have to do with the birth of Christ?  There has been speculation that the tree had originally been a heathen tradition but there was scant information to prove this.

My curiosity started in grade 2 when I was given a coloring page just before the Christmas break.  It was a joyful scene of the Nativity with Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in the manger.  Beside them was a decorated conifer tree growing out of a sand dune.  “What in the heck is that doing there?” I thought to myself.  Even in the second grade I knew that fir trees did not grow in the desert - the picture had an air of wrongness to it.  The wrongness of the tree was to grow stronger over time as I learned more about it.  I began to read theories on the origins of the tree.  Most of them seemed, at best, implausible.  I also began to collect books on the matter.  None of them were helpful - most came to the conclusion that the tree was either 1) a purely Christian invention or 2) that there was not enough information to tell where the tree had come from.  The idea that the tree was entirely Christian seemed unlikely and the supposed lack of historical documents on the tree also looked improbable- surely there had been people keeping records as the first trees went up around the 16th century which could point to its origin.  As it turned out none of what my books said was true - the tree was not Christian in origin and there was, in fact, a historical record that pointed to its origins.  What was true is that none of what I assumed to be factual about the tree was correct.  I had been lied to since the 2nd grade.