From the BBC:

According to one legend the famous Devon Saint, St Boniface, was the creator of the very first Christmas tree. In the early part of the 8th century, St Boniface was sent into Germany as a missionary, with an aim of converting the pagans to Christianity. St Boniface was later to become the patron saint of brewers, so sending him to beer loving Germany may well have been a masterful mission. He worked tirelessly in the country destroying idols and pagan temples across Germany and building churches in their place. He was named Archbishop of Mainz and founded or restored the diocese of Bavaria. It was on this trip, around the time of Winter Solstice, that he was said to have come across a group of pagans worshipping an old oak tree. Horrified by what he saw as blasphemy, the all-action St Boniface grabbed the nearest axe and hacked down the tree. As he did this he called to the pagans to see the power of his God over theirs. Pagan feelings were understandably mixed, but Boniface’s actions were obviously taken in good spirit, with some of the tales saying he converted the pagans on the spot. This is where the tale now divides. Some say St Boniface planted a fir tree there, but the most common idea is that a fir tree grew spontaneously in the oak’s place. The fir was seen as an image of God and many believed its evergreen symbolised the everlasting love of the Maker. According to the myth, the next year all the pagans in the area had been converted to Christianity and hung decorations from the tree to celebrate what they now called Christmas rather than Winter Solstice. The legend spread and soon Christmas trees became the norm in the newly converted Bavaria, and then spread out to become the tinsel strewn, electric lit, bauble hung festival we know today.

Saint Boniface, like most of his delusional ilk, had a profound death-wish which the Heathens of Frisia graciously helped him fulfill. From Butler’s Lives of the Saints:

This apostle of so many nations thought he had yet done nothing, so long as he had not spilt his blood for Christ, and earnestly desired to attain to that happiness. Making use of the privilege which Pope Zachary had granted him of choosing his successor, he consecrated St. Lullus, an Englishman, formerly monk of Malmesbury, archbishop of Mentz, in 754, leaving him to finish the churches which he had begun in Thuringia, and that of Fuld, and conjuring him to apply himself strenuously to the conversion of the remaining idolaters. 

[…]

The saint, looking upon himself as devoted to labour in the conversion of infidels, and being at liberty to follow the call of heaven, would not allow himself any repose, so long as he saw souls perishing in the shades of darkness, and his extreme desire of martyrdom seemed to give him a foresight of his approaching death. Having therefore settled his church and put all things in the best order possible, he set out with certain zealous companions to preach to the savage infidel inhabitants of the northern parts of East Friesland. Having converted and baptized some thousands among them, he appointed the eve of Whit-Sunday to administer to the neophytes the sacrament of confirmation in the open fields in the plains of Dockum, near the banks of the little rivulet Bordne. He pitched there a tent, and was waiting in prayer the arrival of the new converts, when, behold, instead of friends, a band of enraged infidels appeared on the plain all in arms, and coming up, rushed into his tent. The servants that were with the holy martyr were for defending his life by fighting; but he would not suffer it, declaring that the day he had long waited for was come, which was to bring him to the eternal joys of the Lord. He encouraged the rest to meet, with cheerfulness and constancy, a death which was to them the gate of everlasting life. While he was thus employed, the Pagans attacked them sword in hand, and put them all to death. St. Boniface suffered in the seventy-fifth year of his age, on the 5th of June, in the year of Christ 755. With him were martyred fifty-two companions, of whom the principal persons were Eoban, bishop; Wintrung, Walter, and Adelhere, priests; Hamund, Strichald, and Bosa, deacons; Waccar, Gunderhar, Williker, and Hadulph, monks; the rest were laymen.

It’s been a bad pain day for me, so I’m sitting here in my office listening to some good tunes, smoking some passable weed, communing with Dionysos and pondering the dream I had about Tarvos Trigaranos a fortnight or so back, which I alluded to in both the Herakles-play and that spate of posts on Saint Boniface. Specifically this good tune:

As a general policy I try to avoid the comments sections of posts and videos, especially if I happen to like the material, but for some reason I found myself scrolling down until I saw this:

Russ B – 4 weeks ago: Her voice generates an inter-dimensional rift that Jim Morrison frequently takes advantage of to keep tabs on us.

Well, alrighty then.

Sounds like I got an answer – I’m just not sure what the question was. 

Spain is a little confused, it seems. Saint Boniface Day is in June, not February. 

I came across an obscure Germanic deity I have a hunch is related to Óðr, and possibly even his son. This guy:

The God’s name is Stauff or Stuffo, and he operated a popular oracle at Stuffenberg (currently known as Hülfensburg) a mountain between Heiligenstadt and Eschwege, near Geismar in Thuringia. Johann Vinzenz Wolf argued that he was originally a Mountain God (stouf meaning something like “sharp mountain peak”) specifically of the Stuffenberg, and only later developed oracular associations, while others derived his name from the Middle High German sûfen (“drinking to excess”) and a related term meaning “drinking cup.”

He seems to have been represented in the form of a pillar or tree similar to the Irminsal or Donar Oak, around which the population would dance and sing on festival days. His priest would drink to the point of intoxication, and then move through the crowd giving out spontaneous prophecies. 

His cult was ended by that piece of shit Saint Boniface who cut down the pillar or tree, and then backed by Frankish forces slaughtered a bunch of his devotees who had gathered on the mountain. Stuffenberg was renamed Hülfensburg so that the memory of him would be eradicated and the pillar/tree was either thrown into a deep crevice (afterwards known as “Stuffo’s hole”) or else used in the construction of a church on the former site of his worship. Boniface appointed a priest to work out of the church and instruct the neighboring populations in Christianity and then continued his march through Germany committing murder, vandalism and innumerable other atrocities as part of his program of cultural genocide.

Stuffo survived in folktales and clandestine customs until he experienced a modest revival of interest under the 18th and 19th century German Romantics and later the  Völkisch movement. Mostly this was an artistic phenomenon and today he has largely been forgotten, even in his home region – though the Stauffenberg family of Swabian nobility still claim descent from him. Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, as you may recall, was a key figure in the 1944 “20 July plot” to assassinate the Austrian artist Adolf Hitler, a fellow some consider nearly as wicked as Saint Boniface.