Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1914 — EVERY GERMAN HAS ATREE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EVERY GERMAN HAS ATREE

7 *» ■■! K HE Angl i-Saxon notion of th© German /K 7 Christina J is drawn from childhood hours < spent ov r Hans Andersen and Grimm, and the sigh of a Christmas tree brings to mind tle woodcutter tramping home through he snow-laden forest, trailing ber hind bin the fir tree for his family ChristyQx ! mas eeh bration, while, in the towns, the Pv// black qu idrangle of the venerable marketfl place is ricked out in lights blazing on the

trees in the windows bf the gabled houses. Some 50 years ago, before the German giant had awakened from the sleep of centuries, this idea of the peaceful German Christmas was correct. But of one of the burghers of old Berlin, returning from making his Christmas purchases on Christmas eve, vyere to be transplanted into the roaring hdb o empire which his Haupstadt has become, the good man vould probably expire on the spot. Fifty years ago, zhen Berlin was a. dirty, unpretentious, provincial own, with ill-lighted, ill-paved streets, with a renowned even in those days for its surly manners and uncouthness, and with the iron hand of militarism unchecked over it all, the Christmas festival was the tranquil celebration of .which one has read. In the Lustgarten, before the castle, a Christmas fair was annually established which the king and royal family used to visit to buy jumping jacks and gingerbread for the palace Christmas trees, like any other German family. The Lustgarten fair has passed away, the king of Prussia has become German emperor, Berlin has developed into a fair apd beautiful city, and all that remainsi of thei Christmas of once upon a time is the spirit —indeed, a precious inheritance. That stfll holds supreme sway, and rests concealed in the branches of the myriads of Christmas trees which rich and poor alike set up in their homes on t|ie eve of the feast. Otherwise the old German simplicity has vanished. In the house of the rlct merchant electric lights take the

place of the'‘Christ cat dies,” and the motor cAr o t the steam yacht wMgp he | gives his son as a ChrUtniasl present can .find no place |nder the Christmas tree, as d d the woolen comforter, the tandful of gingerbread, 01 the new skates in the day < f his father. Caruso or Destii n on the gramophone take] the place of the Christmas hymns which used to be sung as an act of pious reverence to the “Tannenbaum,” or perhaps even, horriSile dictu, the) tree will be fastened to a clockwork contrivance whicq, on being wound up, revolves to a tune jangled out by a musical box. The bulging one-storied shops with gingerbread and gilt angels stuck in their diamond-paned i window fronts have vanliihed, and their places are taken by stores bjiilt on the same style of palatalal magnificence as ac r ofs the Atlantic. Froni the

_.hnlng of December till the feast they devote a considerable portion of their space to Christmas bazars, where one imagines one’s self transported to Toyland. There are tremendous set pieces with electric trams L airships and railways trains (careering about amid wonderful papier mfiche mountain scenery ravishing visions; of fair doll-women and aj-my on army corps,of the most gallant tin scS/'em that fever manned a fort. ’ The air is rent with an ear-splitting cacophony of noise emitted by mechanical toys, and the Atmosphere reeks with the smell of shavings and glue, that peculiar pungent odor of the toy shop which brings back to the old fogies the mysterious delights of the birthday table. On Christmas eve every German must have his Christmas tree. Whenone passes through the streets on a wet Christmas eve--the sparkling frost and snowy mantle of the feullletonii it rarely put in ah appearance before January—one has the curious feeling of being in the midst of 60,000,000 of people all engaged in doing the same thing. Onecan ima jlne the traveler, looking on the thousands of Mohammed ins laboriously threading their way across the desert of Mecca; to win regarding the scene with similar emotions. For when 1 say every German, it is literally true. The streets of Berlin are deserted, save for the cars and omnibuses and cabs, and an occasional i ollceman, and from behind the blinds of the windows the candles on the Christmas trees, throwing out their little 1 mams into the darkness of the night, as did the star to he shepherds nearly two thou-

sand years ago in fhlr Bethlehem. For Weeks before the festival'th dbsands and thousands of trees are brought by rail -and water from the forester of Thuringia and Mecklenburg to the capital where they, are sold by dealers on the public squares and places. In the last fortnight before Christmas the trim grass plots vanish beneath a forest of Christmas trees ranged up in endless lines, each resting on a roughly tacked-to-gether, deal wood stand. And here from eight in the morning till eight at night, according to paragraph so and so of the police regulations, the millionaire captain of industry, the uniformed official, the bespectacled professor, and the miserably paid, hungry looking school teacher rub shoulders, haggling and bargaining over their Christmas tree. Thfe latter can be had at all prices, from 60 marks for a forest king to 60 .pfennigs for a stunted dwarf. The one may be destined to be hung with coruscating electric lights and decked with diamonds for the banker’s wife, the other feebly illuminated with farthing dips and miserably tricked out with a handful of nuts for the workingman’s family. The men on duty at the electric plant stations on Christmas eve have their tree, as do the engine drivers as they sit in their quarters at the railway yards waiting for the night shifts. The soldiers in the barracks, the sailors at sea, the patients in the hospitals, the convicts in the prisons, even the poor, miserable wretches,' the submerged tenth, cowering about the fires in the refuges for the home-less—-they all have their Tannen-

baum at this holy season of the year. In the German colonies, under a tropical sun, where the cactus must perforce replace the native Hr, Christmas celebrations are held and the same songs sung as at home im lieben Vaterland. • ;■ . Naturally, when all Germany’s children are celebrating, her model family leads the way. At the imperial court Christmas ’is celebrated in exactly the same way as in every- other household throughout the empire. Two especially fine specimens of fir are selected by the royal foresters for the emperor and empress, and other treesin diminishing size for the numerous other members of the emperor’s immediate family, that is, his six sons and one daughter, the wives of his three married sons, and his two the latter being favored with proportionally tiny trees. Tfie whole number are set up in the shell hall of the new palace at Potsdam, where the kaiser always spends Christmas, and the various - gifts, about Which the same secrecy is observed as in the families of the bourgeois, are disposed at the foot of each separate tree. But before the imperial family celebrates the feast, the emperor and empress attend the “feescherung,” or presentation of gifts to the members of the imperial household, valets-de-chambre, personal attendants, lackeys, and footmen. On the afternoon of Christmas eve the emperor, ac. companied by an adjutant whose pockets are stuffed with newly-minted five, three, and two mark pieces, takes the traditional walk through the park of the new palace and distributes money to the beggars who rally in great force. He has a kind word or a cordial greeting for them all, nor does he forget the guard at the gates of the palace.