The Frightening Folklore of Trees

I had a very strange dream a few days ago about people being accused of being witches and being hanged from a tree.  Now, I’ve been thinking about the folklore that surrounds trees.

There is a great deal of folklore about trees. Like the beast is tied to the rose in Beauty and the Beast, there is folklore of people’s lives being tied to trees. When the person dies, the tree dies at the same time. Sometimes people take something that belongs to a person suffering from an illness and puts it on a tree in hopes that the tree will take on the illness and the person will regain their health. In some cultures, certain trees are thought house djinn or other spirits.

Thinking about trees has made me think about the Dwarf Black Elder tree I bought and planted in my yard after I sold my first few articles, seven years ago. I tied my writing career to it in my mind, thinking that my writing career will grow with the tree and that the tree will grow with my writing career. My Elder tree isn’t very big, especially since it is more like a shrub than a tree, but it has grown a little just like my writing career. Even stranger, this is the Elder tree month of the Celtic tree calendar, which is based on thirteen lunar months, and the Elder tree represents endings and death just like in my dream.

Elder trees were used as protection from evil and misfortune. Elder trees were often planted in cemeteries to keep evil spirits away in European countries, but it was also thought that witches could turn into Elder trees.  In Ireland, witches’ brooms were thought to be made of Elder. There is also folklore that anyone who burns Elder tree wood will be cursed and that anyone living in a house that is in the shadow of an Elder tree will be doomed to die at a young age.

Another tree I have been thinking about is the Christmas tree. I recently put my tree up for the Christmas season.  Evergreen trees and plants were thought to ward off witches, spirits, illness, and any kind of evil by some cultures in antiquity. Some people put an ornament that looks like a pickle on their Christmas tree to represent St. Nicolas. The first child to find the pickle ornament on the Christmas tree on Christmas morning receives an extra Christmas gift. St. Nicolas is associated with pickles because of the tale of how he found the bodies of two murdered boys that were dismembered and put in a pickle barrel. After this discovery, he brought them back to life.

Christmas trees aren’t usually thought of as something that produces death omens, but there is a deadly Christmas tree superstition that says after taking down the Christmas tree, every pine needle that falls to the floor and isn’t cleaned up will cause a death in the family. To avoid Christmas tree needles from becoming a harbingers of death, it is best to clean up any fallen pine needles immediately and to make sure not one is overlooked!