Can anyone verify and/or localize the a 12th century tradition of hanging Christmas trees upside down from the ceiling? I was listening to music on a cable tv music channel a few minutes ago when a factoid with this info popped up.
Cliff
Stories go that one one hand an English missionary who toppled an Oak dedicated to the old gods to show a Germanic tribe the power of Christ and in its place used a fir tree to tell them of Christ, and one another hand that a reversed fir tree had been used to explain the Trinity - and that his turned to a Christmas tradition during the High Middle Ages.
Confused? One thing is sure - the Christmas tree as we know (though still called a Yule Tree in my country) is more recent thing tracing its beginnings to 16th century German areas (others suggesting Riga in Latvia) and some suggesting Luther to be the source of the tradition.
These links might help Christmas tree on Wikipedia and this.