The Cherry Tree Carol, Infancy Gospels, and the Holy Quran

 

Over the years the Cherry Tree Carol has emerged as one of my favorite Christmas songs. It’s just so odd! The narrative involves Joseph, Mary, and the in-utero Christ but one will search in vain to find any hint of it in the four canonical Gospels. There are many variations on the text—it is a traditional carol, traced back at least as early as the fifteenth century in England—but the version I first encountered is performed by the folk singer Shirley Collins. Here is the text that she works with:

Joseph was an old man, an old man was he
When he married Virgin Mary, the Queen of Galilee

As Mary and Joseph were walking one day
To an orchard of cherry trees they happened to stray

Then Mary said to Joseph, so meek and so mild
“Pick me some cherries, Joseph, for I am with child”

Then Joseph flew angry, so angry flew he
“Let the father of your baby gather cherries for thee”

The up spoke Lord Jesus from in his mother's womb
“Bow low down, cherry trees, bow down to the ground”

And the cherry trees bowed down, bowed low to the ground
And Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood round

Then Joseph he kneeled down and a question gave he
“Come tell me, pretty baby, when your birthday shall be”

“On the fifth day of January my birthday shall be
And the stars in the heaven shall all bow down to me”

 

Listen to a great performance of the song by Colin Meloy of the Decemberist: 

The Cherry Tree Carol 

There are a lot of curious details here. The New Testament never tells us that Saint Joseph was an, “old man,” but he has often been depicted as such in later traditions. Rather than being the young beloved of Mary as he is often portrayed in more modern accounts, Joseph is here more of an elderly guardian. He was sometimes said to have been a widower with children from a previous marriage. In some accounts he was said to have been chosen by lot to care for the Virgin Mary who was dedicated to the care of the Temple priests as a child. The assumption is that Joseph was her chaste protector rather than a traditional husband.

Then there is the description of the Virgin Mary as, “The Queen of Galilee.” Mary may have had a royal lineage as descendent of King David. Some Bible readers interpret the genealogy in the Gospel of Luke to be through Mary herself. Others suggest that Luke’s genealogy is just a variation on the lineage of Joseph as recorded in Matthew. At any rate, the clear implication is that Jesus is the heir of the house of David. If Christ is King, then certainly Mary is Queen Mother. By all accounts however, Joseph and Mary were people of modest means without power or status in the world. The description of Mary as, “The Queen of Galilee” is more of a spiritual or honorary description. Her Queendom is not of this world.

Of course Jesus announcing from the womb that his birthday will be on fifth day of January just caps off the weirdness. Without getting off on too lengthy of a historical digression this reflects an older calendar and tradition.

So we know the carol is old, perhaps as old as the fifteenth century, but just how old is the narrative it contains? It is actually much older! Variations can be found in the liturgies of  the early Christian communities of Syria (This ancient Middle-Eastern tradition still exists today although the tradition has been nearly eradicated by the radical Islamic extremist, ISIS.) These in turn probably originate in an apocryphal text referred to by various titles, The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, The Infancy Gospel of Matthew, or the longer: The Book About the Origin of the Blessed Mary and the Childhood of the Savior.

It is easy to see the similarity between the Cherry Tree Carol and chapter twenty of The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew:

And it came to pass on the third day of their journey, while they were walking, that the blessed Mary was fatigued by the excessive heat of the sun in the desert; and seeing a palm tree, she said to Joseph: Let me rest a little under the shade of this tree. Joseph therefore made haste, and led her to the palm, and made her come down from her beast. And as the blessed Mary was sitting there, she looked up to the foliage of the palm, and saw it full of fruit, and said to Joseph: I wish it were possible to get some of the fruit of this palm. And Joseph said to her: I wonder that thou sayest this, when thou seest how high the palm tree is; and that thou thinkest of eating of its fruit. I am thinking more of the want of water, because the skins are now empty, and we have none wherewith to refresh ourselves and our cattle. Then the child Jesus, with a joyful countenance, reposing in the bosom of His mother, said to the palm: O tree, bend thy branches, and refresh my mother with thy fruit. And immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of the blessed Mary; and they gathered from it fruit, with which they were all refreshed. And after they had gathered all its fruit, it remained bent down, waiting the order to rise from Him who bad commanded it to stoop. Then Jesus said to it: Raise thyself, O palm tree, and be strong, and be the companion of my trees, which are in the paradise of my Father; and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid in the earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be satisfied from thee. And it rose up immediately, and at its root there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling. And when they saw the spring of water, they rejoiced with great joy, and were satisfied, themselves and all their cattle and their beasts. Wherefore they gave thanks to God. (From: Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol 8 1886 ed Alexander Roberts, Sir James Donaldson, Arthur Cleveland Coxe – 1886.)

 

Pseudo-Matthew is part of a larger genre of, “Infancy Gospels” which seek to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ infancy and boyhood as well as the Virgin Mary’s own history. Although these Gospels are non-canonical they had a influence in perpetuating the Church’s developing traditions especially when it comes to it’s Mariology or doctrines about the Mother of God.  Many of these traditions have found their way into another ancient text, “The Holy Quran” the sacred book of Islam.

Christians are often surprised to discover just how prominent Jesus and his Mother are within the pages of the Quran. For instance, here is an account of the birth of Jesus given in the Quran, Surah 19:23-33, named for Mary. Notice the similarities with Pseudo-Matthew and the Cherry Tree Carol. After Mary is visited by the Angel she miraculously conceives a child and goes out to the desert to be delivered,

The labor-pains came upon her, by the trunk of a palm-tree. She said, “I wish I had died before this, and been completely forgotten.”

 Whereupon he called her from beneath her: “Do not worry; your Lord has placed a stream beneath you. And shake the trunk of the palm-tree towards you, and it will drop ripe dates by you. So eat, and drink, and be consoled. And if you see any human, say, ‘I have vowed a fast to the Most Gracious, so I will not speak to any human today.'“

Then she came to her people, carrying him. They said, “O Mary, you have done something terrible. O sister of Aaron, your father was not an evil man, and your mother was not a whore.”

So she pointed to him. They said, “How can we speak to an infant in the crib?”

He said, “I am the servant of God. He has given me the Scripture, and made me a prophet. And has made me blessed wherever I may be; and has enjoined on me prayer and charity, so long as I live. And kind to my mother, and He did not make me a disobedient rebel. So Peace is upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the Day I get resurrected alive.”

As in the Cherry Tree Carol, Jesus speaks up to vindicate his mother from the charge of fornication. Unlike the Canonical Gospels, Jesus speaks and performs miracles even as an infant! In the case of the Quran this is especially striking. Despite the Quran’s own claims that Jesus in merely a prophet and not the Son of God, Jesus seems more divine and less human!

These legends were probably carried to Europe by Christian Crusaders in the twelfth century. Appropriate to a different setting and climate the Palm tree and dates became an orchard of Cherry Trees. It is a fascinating lineage for a curious and charming Christmas classic!