THE legend of the Glastonbury Thorn is that after the death of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea came over to England and a few days before Christmas rested on the summit of Weary-all Hill, Glastonbury. There he thrust into the ground his staff which on Christmas Eve was found to be covered with snow white blossoms; and until it was destroyed during the Civil wars the bush continued so to bloom, as cuttings from the original thorn are said to bloom in the same wonderful way even yet; but, with a fine disregard for the Gregorian reformation of the Calendar, the blossoms do not appear until the 5th of January.
The Sicilian children, so Folkard tells us, put pennyroyal in their cots on Christmas Eve, "under the belief that at the exact hour and minute when the infant Jesus was born this plant puts forth its blossom." Another belief is that the blossoming occurs again on Midsummer Night.
In the East the Rose of Jericho is looked upon with favour by women with child, for "there is a cherished legend that it first blossomed at our Saviour's birth, closed at the Crucifixion, and opened again at Easter, whence its name of Resurrection Flower."
Gerarde, the old herbalist, tells us that the black hellebore is called "Christ's Herb," or "Christmas Herb," because it "flowreth about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Many plants, trees, and flowers owe their peculiarities to their connection with the birth or the childhood of Christ. The Ornithogalum umbellatum is called the "Star of Bethlehem," according to Folkard, because "its white stellate flowers resemble the pictures of the star that indicated the birth of the Saviour of mankind." The Galium verum, "Our Lady's Bedstraw," receives its name from the belief that the manger in which the infant Jesus lay was filled with this plant.
"The brooms and the chick-peas began to rustle and crackle, and by this noise betrayed the fugitives. The flax bristled up. Happily for her, Mary was near a juniper; the hospitable tree opened its branches as arms and enclosed the Virgin and the Child within their folds, affording them a secure hiding-place. Then the Virgin uttered a malediction against the brooms and the chick-peas, and ever since that day they have always rustled and crackled." The story goes on to tell us that the Virgin "pardoned the flax its weakness, and gave the juniper her blessing," which accounts for the use of the latter in some countries for Christmas decorations,—like the holly in England and France.
"One Christmas Eve a peasant felt a great desire to eat cabbage and, having none himself, he slipped into a neighbour's garden to cut some. Just as he had filled his basket, the Christ-Child rode past on his white horse, and said: 'Because thou hast stolen on the holy night, thou shalt immediately sit in the moon with thy basket of cabbage.'" And so, we are told, "the culprit was immediately wafted up to the moon," and there he can still be seen as "the man in the moon."
Alexander F. Chamberlain
The Signs of the Season in the Kitchen
