America's first Christmas tree

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Any day now, I, along with a number of my children and grandchildren, will embark on an annual pilgrimage.

It's a Christmas tradition still practiced by many in Virginia. We will avoid the big box stores and corner lots and make our way down a narrow dirt road somewhere here in the Shenandoah Valley to a Christmas tree farm. There, we will scatter to scout out a perfect specimen.

After a lengthy debate and judging contest, I will cut down our tree. Hopefully, a fresh snow will blanket the ground, adding to the ambience of the occasion. Then we'll go back home for some apple cider (just a tad hard) and the trimming of the tree to complete our day.

Of course, this tradition is not exclusive to Virginia, though we Virginians are able to claim proudly the Christmas tree's origin here in America. The custom's progenitor was Charles Frederick Ernest Minnigerode (1814-1894).

Minnigerode is more widely known as rector of the "Church of the Confederacy" -- St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, where he ministered for 33 years and where both Gen. Robert E. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis worshipped.

Born in Germany, young Minnigerode was thoroughly educated in the classics and confirmed to the Lutheran Church at the age of 15.

Entering the University of Giessen to study law in 1832, the young man soon became embroiled in the raging political debates that engulfed Germany at that time. Things came to a head in 1834. Minnigerode, who wanted to help establish a democratic Germany, was accused of being a "revolutionary," arrested and thrown into prison. For the next four years, he languished in various prisons, even spending some of that time in ancient German dungeons.

For most of the time Minnigerode was imprisoned, he was allowed only one book -- the Bible. Tradition has it that he read it through eight times -- memorizing much of what he read during his lonely hours of solitude. One biographer wrote, "He would reflect on it, write essays on it in his mind ... he laid it down and put it in his heart as God's book, as divine."

This prison experience with "God's book" would serve him well in his future role ministering to dejected Richmonders, who, like Minnigerode, also would know lonely hours and experience their own form of imprisonment.

Eventually, Minnigerode became ill from exposure in the dank prisons, and jail officials worried that he might die. Not wanting that responsibility, they put him under house arrest and released him to the care of his brother and father.