Latvia and its Baltic neighbour Estonia are exchanging
friendly jabs over the claim that each was home to the first-ever
town Christmas tree some five centuries ago.
As the Latvian capital Riga marks what it says is the 500th
anniversary of its tree, its Estonian counterpart Tallinn has hit
back.
"I received a present from the mayor of Tallinn, Edgar Savisaar,
a short Christmas tree," Riga's mayor Nils Usakovs told AFP.
"He congratulated us on the 500th anniversary of the Riga
Christmas tree and reminded us that Tallinn is celebrating the
569th anniversary," Usakovs said.
"It's good that the sole topic of disagreement between Riga and
Tallinn is who has the oldest Christmas tree," he joked.
In the ongoing jousting, Latvia's tourist office rented
billboard space in Tallinn inviting locals to see the home of the
tree -- at Riga's festival.
According to researchers who back the Latvian side, the first
tree wasn't actually the classic evergreen known today.
In 1510 a group of merchants built a pyramid-shaped wooden
structure dubbed a "tree", decorated with dried flowers, fruit and
vegetables, and even straw toys.
They are thought to have paraded it around their meeting hall
before burning it to signify the end of the old year and the
beginning of the new.
Estonians, meanwhile, insist that the world's first Christmas
tree was erected in front of Tallinn town hall in 1441 as part of a
winter ritual where merchants and single women danced around the
tree and later set it on fire.
"The Latvians' claim that the first public Christmas tree was
put up in Riga is not correct," art historian Juri Kuuskemaa wrote
in Estonian largest daily Postimees this week.
Both Riga and Tallinn at the time were home to guilds of
unmarried merchants, known as the Blackheads, who were traders from
German statelets.
Mike Johnson, a Riga-based American who has researched the
history of the Christmas tree, said the origin debate was in any
case fairly academic.
"It is after all a legend, much like Santa Claus, and what right
does Finland have to call itself Santa Claus's home?" he told
AFP.