O Tannenbaum

"O Tannenbaum" (German: [oː ˈtanənbaʊm]; "O fir tree"), known in English as "O Christmas Tree", is a German Christmas song. Based on a traditional folk song that was unrelated to the holiday, it became associated with the traditional Christmas tree.

The song lyrics draw on a long-standing tradition of the Tannenbaum (the German name for a fir tree) as a symbol of faithfulness due to the tree's evergreen quality. As early as the 16th century, songbooks included a text that gave rise to a folk song, "O Tannenbaum, du trägst ein' grünen Zweig" ("O fir tree, you wear a green branch"). In the 1856 edition of the Deutscher Liederhort, folk song collector Ludwig Erk identified three distinct melodies associated with this song in different regions of Germany. While the tunes were only recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries, a line from the song using one of the melodies was quoted in 1605 by Melchior Franck in the quodlibet "Nun fanget an".

In 1820 German educator August Zarnack published the second volume of his collection of folk songs for use in schools, including as No. 51 "Der Tannenbaum". For this number the existing folk song may have served as inspiration, but the text now presented as a lover's complaint, in which the fidelity of the fir tree is contrasted with the fickleness of a maiden. Zarnack also paired the song with a tune a bit different from those collected by Erk, using a melody that had earlier been published with the song "Es lebe hoch der Zimmermannsgeselle" ("Up high works the carpenter's apprentice"). As was occasionally the practice of folklorists under German Romanticism, Zarnack may well have written much or all of the text himself, basing the song on his own conception of a suitably folk idiom.

The lyrics known today were written by Ernst Anschütz, a teacher and organist in Leipzig, and published in his 1824 Musikalisches Schulgesangbuch. Anschütz wrote two additional verses to the song, linking the tree's faithful colouration to the joy and hope of the Christmas season. While he published it with the same "Zimmermannsgeselle" tune as Zarnack, it eventually was associated with the melody of "Lauriger Horatius", an old student song. As the custom of decorating Christmas trees became more widespread in this period, this became one of the most popular Christmas songs in both German and English, although it is not explicitly about such a tree.

Anschütz retained Zarnack's first verse, hence in German the song does not actually refer to Christmas until the second verse. Some versions today change treu ("faithful") to grün ("green") and may also alter the line Wie oft hat nicht zur Weihnachtszeit to Wie oft hat schon zur Winterzeit; if the third verse with pedagogical allusions to religion is omitted, the text can be made effectively secular.

Source

The tune has also been used (as a contrafactum) to carry other texts on many occasions. Notable uses include: