The Miracle in Glastonbury

Joseph's hawthorn staff sprouts branches and flowersThere are many examples of pagan beliefs being grafted onto the Christian story. Joseph of Arimathea is mentioned in the Gospels (four of them) as the wealthy man who had the crucified messiah buried in his own family tomb. But by the Middle Ages his role had been expanded and he was given credit for introducing Christianity to Great Britain before the coming of the Romans in 43 A.D.

When I was child we had an illustrated book of Christmas stories, including the legend of Joseph and his staff. Four decades later I can still see in my mind's eye the picture of the white-beared old man dressed in the robes of the Middle East incongruous in a temperate setting. He stands before a staff thrust into the ground with small branches growing from it; the branches are covered with white flowers. Baffled Britons in furs hover in the distance, if anything more amazed than Joseph at the transformation of his hawthorn staff into a flowering tree.

The “Glastonbury thorn” is a variety of Craetagus monogyne called 'Biflora' because it blooms in mid-winter on the previous growing season's “new wood” and then again in late spring on “old wood.” This mutation is apparently somatic because all plants grown from the seed of the original Glastonbury trees prove to be normal spring flowering specimens. All existing “Glastonbury thorns” are cut from the original trees and grown as grafts, often on blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). A cursory survey of references suggests that while this is not a difficult thing to do with hawthorns, it is not trivial either.

The legend of Joseph of Arimathea and his sprouting staff is compelling in part because most people who have done some gardening or simply worked outside will have had the experience of cutting down sapling of fast growing trees like sumac, ailanthus or Norway maple (to simply cite my own experience) and driving them into the ground as tomato stakes or the fencing around a compost pile and having them sprout leaves after a few days. In the legend of Joseph his staff is either the staff of Christ himself or made from the wood of the Cross. Either way, a bit different from a freshly cut sapling. Not to mention the detail that Joseph's staff sprouted flowering branches over night.

Crataegus monogyna

To some extent the hawthorn staff seems to represent Jesus in the sense that both are made dead then come to life again. In the broader sense this is an incursion of the pagan focus on dead-rebirth cycles into the more linear sense of history going from genesis to apocalypse that one associates with Middle Eastern religions. That the story of Joseph involves a Middle Eastern personage traveling to northwest Europe essentially standing in for the export of Christianity itself in that direction.

In Scots tradition the hawthorn tree was said to stand the entrance to the netherworld inhabited by the fairies. It's association with the fairies translated into its being very bad luck to cut down a hawthorn unless it was in bloom. In early December 2010 the Glastonbury thorn on Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury was pruned back aggressively by vandals.

The press suggested that the attack was anti-Christian, although it is possible that it could have been the work of Christian fundamentalists insulted by the pagan-Christian melding that the worship of the tree exemplifies. During Oliver Cromwell's Puritan overthrow of the Stuart monarchy the thorn at Glastonbury abbey was cut down (and the abbott was lynched) because the importance given to the tree was seen (accurately) as idolatrous. Whose to say whether or not the same sentiments weren't at work in 2010?

Glastonbury thorn before radical pruning

In a heart-warming and very pagan follow-up the mangled old thorn tree began pushing out new growth the following March. There was never a danger that the Glastonbury thorn would become extinct however. There are numerous specimens in gardens, churchyards, and public places throughout the region, all derived from grafts from the original tree.

Each year a cutting is taken from the thorn at the Church of St. John and delivered to Buckingham Palace in order that it may grace the royal family's Christmas table. This is interesting in the sense that before the reform of the calendar in 1752, Christmas was celebrated on January 5 (Advent) in England. The Glastonbury thorn is more likely to be in bloom by that date than by December 25. Perhaps the flowers were forced in years when they hadn't bloomed on the tree by Christmas.

According to the Daily Western Press forcing won't be necessary this year. The Glastonbury thorn began blooming in at least one man's garden in Somerset on Christmas Eve.