The Glastonbury Holy Thorn

Friends, December is here and we have done poinsettias (Mexican), Christmas trees (German) and plants before poinsettias (American). Now we will try an English/Celtic/Welsh/Irish story. You may remember that the introduction to the summer Olympic Games featured flag bearers from each country climbing up what the announcer called the Glastonbury Hill. Well, Leon remembers tales about the actual hill from his long-ago, sabbatical in England.

Leon: I didn’t really see it, just heard the stories and have used Google to recall what my friends were saying back then. Bear with me while I give some background—there really is a Christmas story here. Glastonbury is a small town in southwestern England. It is essentially a peninsula of small hills overlooking the flood plain of the Brue river. The largest of these is Tor hill, from a Celtic word meaning “hill”. It has an old tower at the top that was once a church dedicated to the Archangel Michael, but it may have also been a fortification. Sometime in the Middle Ages, the structure was destroyed by an earthquake. I will return to Tor later. There is a smaller hill called the Chalice Hill, because legend says that the Holy Grail was once buried there. After that is Wearyall Hill, where legend says the Glastonbury Holy Thorn tree first sprouted. Back in the early “Current Era Times,” these hills formed a sort of peninsula that extended out into a swamp formed by the river. This was the lake, as in home to the mythical Lady of the Lake. Viewed from the west, Glastonbury looked like an island. The only mainland entrance was on the southeast where a large defensive wall had been built. The Celts name for the peninsula was something that means “place where the apples grow”—Avalon.

Now for the Tor. It has a strange, twisting trail running to the top, and this is what the flag bearers were supposed to be climbing during this summer’s Olympic ceremony. The hill itself is supposed to be hollow and an entrance to the Otherworld. This is where Celtic kings would have been buried—probably in tunnels. According to legend, King Arthur was sent to Avalon after his final battle. This is where he threw Excalibur, and the Lady of the Lake reached up for it.

Archeology shows no occupation of the area earlier than Celtic times. There is no doubt that Glastonbury was a Celtic sacred territory. It was governed by a federal assembly of twelve tribes, known as the Twelve Tribes of Glaston. There is a questionable account saying that King Anviragus granted twelve hides (120 acres) of the area to twelve Christian missionaries. The Christian missionaries built a mud and wattle church that remained for several centuries. After the Roman collapse, a group of Celtic Christian monks occupied the old wattle church and it became known as “the holiest Earth of England”. Then the Anglo Saxons moved in on the south east of England and began conquering the different kingdoms—as they moved in they destroyed all Christian institutions. But resistance made the invasion slow and by the time they reached Glastonbury, about 650 AD, the new West Saxon King had become a Christian and Glastonbury was saved. The claim of Glastonbury being the origin of British Christianity is questionable, but Glastonbury is the longest unbroken site of Christian worship.

The old church expanded and became an abbey of the Benedictine Order in 673. In 920 a new abbot, St. Dunstan, took over and saw that the shallow swamp around Glastonbury was good farmland. He had levees built along the river and drained the swamp, and the area became rich farmland. During this time the monastery flourished under royal patronage and was wealthy in land, gold, religious relics, and a large library. This continued until King Henry II died and his successor, Richard I, lost interest in it. Suddenly the monastery was feeling the pinch of poverty, but as if by magic they found a tradition from a Welsh Druid telling where the monks should dig on the abbey grounds. Sixteen feet down they found a large lead cross with a Latin inscription: “Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avon.” A little deeper they found an oak trunk made into a coffin with the bones of a tall man who had been killed by a blow to his skull. Nearby, they found another skeleton with smaller bones, that they felt sure was Queen Guinevere’s. With these relics, the monastery began to prosper again.

Then came Henry VIII. In 1539 he sent an order to claim the Twelve Hides of land for himself and wanted the abbey destroyed. The abbot protested mightily, especially about having to give away their most precious relic: a glass vial containing some blood and sweat from Jesus on the cross. Henry had him hanged, then drawn and quartered.

Now for the Christmas story about the Holy Thorn Tree. It is an ordinary hawthorn that blooms in May, but this one was probably a mutation that will produce a second bloom in December. We see this kind of bloom with pear trees around Baton Rouge. If a tree loses its leaves early because of a leaf disease, the heat of the sun will break dormancy of the current year’s growth and it will bloom, occasionally making a few pears. Some monk from the abbey in Glastonbury thought this thorn tree was interesting, so he grafted it onto a seedling hawthorn, which proved to be the only way to preserve the second blooming characteristic.

Fast forward to 1653 when Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers cut the tree down and burned it because it represented the old pagan religion. But the monks took cuttings of the original tree and grafted them onto rootstock, keeping the Holy Thorn alive. They warmed it in the fall so that it always bloomed for Christmas.

Now I can put in the Christmas connection and then move onto the legend. When the Gregorian calendar was revised in 1752, the people were much upset as to where their missing ten days had gone but, more importantly, when would they celebrate Christmas? A wise old monk suggested that the Holy Thorn answered only to God, so it would bloom on the correct date for Christmas. The popular account says that it bloomed on the new Christmas day and everybody was satisfied.

The custom of sending a flowering branch of the thorn to the Queen for Christmas Day began during the reign of King James I, when it was sent to his consort, Queen Anne.

After that, the Vicar and Mayor of Glastonbury sent a flowering branch to the Queen every Christmas until 1991 when the tree died. But the tradition is being revived by the pupils of St. John’s Infants School in Glastonbury. They have two Holy Thorn bushes grafted from the parent tree on their grounds and make a big ceremony of singing carols and having the oldest pupil cut a flowering branch to be sent to the Queen.

And, in 1965 Queen Elizabeth had a cross erected at Glastonbury with the inscription: “The cross. The symbol of our faith. The gift of Queen Elizabeth II marks a Christian sanctuary so ancient that only legend can record its origin.”

Now, I can tell of the legend quickly. It goes that after the death of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea took Mary the mother of Jesus, and twelve companions to England to establish a new church. When they got to the top of Wearyall Hill they stopped to rest and Joseph stuck his staff in the moist ground. It developed roots and sprouted into the tree that bloomed on Christmas day.  Since then the Holy Thorn has faithfully bloomed on Christmas day, even changing the date according to the new calendar.