The Origin of Christmas Colors

How Green and Red Became Symbols of Christmas

by Nicole Skutelnik

Surprisingly, conventional Christmas colors weren’t inspired by holiday characters or festive decorations. Red didn’t come from candy canes or Rudolf’s nose or Santa Claus’s suit. And green wasn’t inspired by Santa’s elves, holiday wreaths or sprigs of holly. In fact, the convention began very long ago:

The Origin of Christmas Colors

There are two accepted beliefs about the origin of traditional Christmas colors, one based on Christian faith, and the other based on historical fact.

Christian Belief

The color green is a natural representation of eternal life, specifically the evergreen tree and how it survives through the winter season. That’s why, in Christian belief, green represents the eternal life of Jesus Christ. The color red symbolizes Christ’s blood which was shed during his crucifixion.

Historical Fact

Back in the 14th Century, churches presented Miracle Plays—religious plays used to educate the illiterate public. Traditionally on December 24, the church presented The Paradise Play, the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. And in place of an apple tree—as they weren’t available in winter—they fastened apples to the branches of a pine tree. Using a pine to represent the Tree of Good and Evil became a common practice among churches and they began incorporating the tree into their Christmas displays each year. But it didn’t stop there. Following the church’s example, people began assembling pine trees in their homes and decorating them with red apples. This act introduced two modern traditions: the Christmas tree and our seasonal colors, green for the pine tree and red for the apples.

Cultural Symbolism of Green and Red

While green and red may be the widely accepted colors denoting the Christmas season, the individual colors have had different meanings from one culture to the next.

Red

Depending on where you are in the world, red can represent anything from anger and sin to fortune and fertility. In some countries, like China and India, red is worn at weddings. In central Africa, red symbolizes health and life, whereas in South Africa it’s the color of death and mourning. Red can represent power and status, a good example being the red carpet. Roses and hearts associate red with love and passion, whereas traffic signs and stop signs associate it with danger and warning. And red is also a patriotic color for many countries, such as Britain and the USA, symbolizing blood, sacrifice and courage.

Green

Nowadays green dominates as the color of environmentalism, but like the color red, it also has many other conflicting connotations. It can represent nature and growth, as well as mould and decomposition. In the Middle Ages, green represented love and fertility, and brides often wore green on their wedding day. But at the same time, it was also the color of poison, devilry and evil. In some countries, green is considered the luckiest color, representing fortune, wealth and prosperity. But in Ireland, where green is the national color, it’s actually considered unlucky. The Irish wear the color in hopes that things will take a turn for the better. In most parts of the world, green represents life, growth and balance; however, in some countries, like South America, green is a symbol of death.

Together, green and red inspire warm thoughts of the Christmas season. But separately, they represent an entire world of different meanings.

Read more at Suite101: The Origin of Christmas Colors: How Green and Red Became Symbols of Christmas

At The Natural Gait we start celebrating Christmas colors in August and September by enjoying the Royal Catchfly and Cardinal Flowers.

http://www.ionxchange.com/species_pages/s/silene_regia.html

http://www.ionxchange.com/species_pages/l/lobelia_cardinalis.html

Trout Fishing in Northeast Iowa as Reported in the New York Times

Hey, Earthyman here! I was just reading the article in The New York Times about trout fishing in Northeast Iowa and what a coincidence that turned out to be. My friend and I were fishing just out the backdoor of The Natural Gait on Thanksgiving Day and caught Rainbow and Brown Trout on the Yellow River here. Take a look at Terry latching onto two Rainbows View Video

Taken From The New York Times

Brad Johansen, my guide for this day of fishing in the Driftless Area of northeastern Iowa was discussing our fishing options between bites of biscuits and gravy at a diner. Mr. Johansen, a high school science teacher who guides on the side, said the bull had chased him over a fence the previous week.“It doesn’t matter, though,” he said while laying a $5 bill on the table to pay for his breakfast. “I caught a 31-inch trout a few days ago in the area we’re headed to this morning.” Cow pastures and cornfields are the milieu for trout angling in this hidden landscape of limestone valleys and cold-water streams. The Driftless Area occupies 24,000 square miles along the Mississippi River in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The word “driftless” refers to the lack of gravelly drift in the region from the last glaciation 12,000 years ago. The Wisconsonian glacier that plowed under much of the upper Midwest missed this pocket of more than 600 spring-fed creeks, and so the Driftless endures as 500-million-year-old karst country, where steep forested valleys descend into shadowed coulees.“Trout in the Driftless Area are as big and you can catch as many as the trout rivers out West,” said Bill Kalishek, fisheries biologist for the Iowa Natural Resources Department. Mr. Kalishek said some streams held as many as 4,000 trout per mile. “Fishing the Driftless is just different,” he said. “The streams are smaller. The setting is more intimate than those big Western rivers.”After miles of driving through croplands out of Decorah, Mr. Johansen guided his minivan down a one-lane gravel road in the Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area. We bushwhacked through willow thickets along a five-foot-wide stream, scaring up bluebirds, wood ducks and a pileated woodpecker.“These are wild trout now, so you have to be on your game,” Mr. Johansen said in a whisper. “You only get one cast. If you miss your spot or get tangled up, you’ll spook the hole.”Our party of four included two men casting spinning lures (me and Mr. Johansen), a bait fisherman using worms (Dennis Evelsizer, a friend of Mr. Johansen’s from Decorah) and a fanatic fly angler (Mike Dvorak, a friend of mine from St. Paul). A survey by the trout advocacy group Trout Unlimited found that 74 percent of Driftless Area fishermen were fly anglers, though Mr. Johansen said most of his clients use spinning gear. Casting spinners lacks the romanticism of waving a fly rod like an orchestra conductor, but there’s a skill and an art to it, as Mr. Johansen demonstrated. He padded through the oak understory to within a few feet of the stream, then flipped his spinner — sometimes overhand, sometimes underhand, sometimes sideways — with surgical precision to land with a “plip” in the water near a snag of fallen branches on the opposite bank. “My fly-fishing clients spend a lot of time untangling their equipment,” he said with a grin. On we pressed through more thickets until we reached a beaver dam with a deep pool behind it. Mr. Johansen spotted an otter sliding away. “That’s not good,” he said. “Otters eat lots of fish.”But his worries dissipated on my second cast, when an electric jolt shot up my rod, the tip bent, and in moments I was holding a 12-inch brook trout in my hands. It was a strikingly handsome fish, with a forest-green speckled back and orange fins.The region teemed with brook trout when European settlers arrived in the 19th century, logged the hillsides bare and planted croplands from which topsoil washed into valley bottoms, burying streams under 12 feet of sediment in some places. By the 1930s federal farm programs to control erosion started the comeback of the Driftless’s cold-water streams, which were stocked with brown trout, rainbow trout and more brook trout. By 1980 five trout streams in Iowa’s Driftless Area supported natural spawning, with only one stream harboring the last surviving lineage of Iowa’s native brook trout. With the 1980s and the rise of the Conservation Reserve Program that paid farmers to idle erosion-prone crop fields as grasslands, the Driftless Area’s prairie character began to re-emerge. Today 33 trout streams in Iowa’s Driftless support natural spawning. But now Driftless trout anglers worry that high corn prices because of demand for ethanol could erase those gains, as more lands are put back to agricultural use. Mr. Dvorak, the fly angler, caught and released 10 brook trout in the pool behind the beaver dam. Mr. Johansen and Mr. Evelsizer both kept foot-long brookies. On our walk back out, I cast my spinner by a log pile in a stream bend and landed a 15-inch brown trout. Mr. Johansen unceremoniously threw mine in his plastic grocery sack with the three others.