The Christmas tree on the town hall square in Augsburg bears 300 gold stars, and around 1,000 lights illuminated the local Christmas market. Christmas is over, but the 33-year-old tree donated by the neighboring community of Neusäß should still be standing. That would be a shame too. There are city administrations that have to listen to a lot from their citizens because they put up famine spruces that at best remind of the suffering of the German forests, but do not spread much Christmas splendor. The 18 meter high fir tree from Augsburg was a magnificent specimen that people loved to look at.
And yet the fir tree is soon mutilated, wantonly, by the fire department. According to the city, the tree will be pruned on February 7th. According to custom, only the bare trunk remains standing, with a small crown at the top: the “Christmas tree for everyone”, as the people of Augsburg call their Christmas tree, is then a fool’s tree. Such a delimbed fir tree symbolizes the symbol of power of the fools in a central place in the city. There are different versions of where the tradition comes from. Some say that the custom of the fool’s tree developed from the tradition of butchers, who used to carry small trees with them at the carnival dance. It could also be modeled on the maypole or go back to the so-called block pulling, a procession in which unmarried women in the Middle Ages dragged a tree trunk through the streets from which they could perhaps carve a man for themselves.
The fool’s tree is not only mutilated by the fire department, the rescue workers can’t do anything about it anyway. The city’s carnival societies then decorate it. From the point of view of the carnival-loving majority in Bavaria, it is a slow and painful death for the magnificent fir tree, which has to endure a lot of carnival activities around the town hall square. Social officer Martin Schenkelberg, a credible carnival fan because he comes from Hennef in the Rhineland, dutifully states that he is downright fascinated by “the abundance of the Augsburg carnival”. On Ash Wednesday the tree, which had been used twice, made it. Then the fire department arrives again – and disposes of the tree.