Planting tree when a child is born

When I was born my father planted an apple tree. 

At that time my family lived in a small village in the mountains of the south eastern Serbia, where my parents worked as teachers...They lived in a house next to the school building, so he planted the tree in front of it...

Then, at the age of 2, after I almost died from pneumonia in a village with no road, 20 km from the nearest doctor, my mother who was then pregnant with my brother, decided she had enough, and so we left the village and moved to Belgrade. 

Years passed...One late August, my father decided to show me the place where I was born. After a long car drive and a long hike up the mountain, we finally reached the village...And there in front of the school, I saw a beautiful young apple tree full of apples...

It is then that my father told me that this was "my tree" which he planted when I was born. When I asked him why he did it, he told me that in his village people always planted a fruit or nut tree when a child was born, so each child would have a tree to grow together with...

Many more years passed. I started researching Slavic tree worship, and then I remembered my apple tree. I started digging around, and it turned out that the custom was not a widespread or well known custom in Serbia...

But maybe it once was, because what I could find was this:

Slavs had huge respect for fruit trees. It was forbidden to cut a fruit tree. Even injuring a fruit tree was seen as a sin which could lead to injury, death, drought...

Slavs saw fruit trees as "symbolic human twins". There is a Slavic belief that if a storm uprooted an apple tree, that would be a sign that the owner would die...This is most likely a remnant of the custom of planting a fruit tree when a child is born to give child a tree twin...

In Polesie, the area in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, after the death of the owner, people used to cut down one of his pear or apple trees. Here again we see this link between a person and a tree and of the ritual planting of fruit trees for a newborn children...

In Serbia, after a person died, a fruit tree was planted "if the person didn't plant one himself while he was alive". People believed that after someone died, his soul spent some time in a fruit tree or a stone...Another link between the people and trees and their destinies...

Fruit trees were also never used in sickness transfer magic...This is magic in which sickness is transferred from a person to a tree...Why? Is it because all fruit trees were seen as someone's twins?

But at the same time there was a custom to perform healing magic (which was assisted by the spirits of the dead ancestors) in orchards. Why? Is it because fruit trees contained spirits of their human twins?

And what abut a Serbian custom of of burying children which died before they were baptised under fruit trees...

Fruit trees were also directly linked to human fertility, particularly female fertility. If a woman wants to cure her infertility, she needs to eat first buds, flowers or fruit from a fruit tree which produces a lot of fruit every year. Or the last fruit left on such a tree...

A pregnant woman was forbidden to climb fruit trees or even touch them, because "the tree would dry out" (she would steal the tree's fertile energy)...

Fruit trees were also linked to male fertility. There was a belief in Serbia that "men who graft fruit trees a lot will not have children"...Grafting was seen as a kind of fertility magic, in which a man grafting the tree transferred, in some way, his fertility to the tree...

The water that was used to wash a woman in labor was thrown under a fruit tree and umbilical cords were also buried under fruit trees. To keep the mother and child healthy...

In Croatian villages in Srem, on the day of the wedding, bride would wash herself in water in which aromatic herbs, gold coins and walnuts were thrown. That water was spilled under a fruit tree that yielded a lot of fruit every year. So that the bride would have many children...

The fact that Croats used walnut as a magic ingredient in the bride's bath is interesting. Because, once there was a custom in some parts of Croatia (Slavonia) and in Serbia, to plant a walnut tree when a baby was born...

In Serbia, walnut with honey is given to the bride and groom on entering her husband's house "so they will can have many children"...

Another wedding fertility ritual from Serbia which involved walnuts were so called "svadbeni orasi" (wedding walnuts). This was a mix of grain, fruit and walnuts which was thrown on the newly weds as part of the wedding ceremony...

By the way, this was also a Roman custom. They threw walnuts at the bride and groom to ensure their fertility...Anyone else has this "strange" custom of throwing walnuts at the bride and groom?

In Serbia walnut is also the food of the dead. During Christmas celebrations, which are in Serbia part of the ancestral cult, one walnut is thrown into each corner of the house "for the ancestors"...

Interestingly, Serbs believed that it was the ancestors who gave the living all the fruit of the land. Which means that here walnut was again part of a fertility ritual...

So no surprise then that walnut tree was planted when a child was born. It is all part of the same fertility cult. Well, it is a surprise. Because at the same time people believed that "walnut was an evil tree"...

They believed that it was bad to plant walnut tree next to the house, as its shade is evil and will cause all people from the house to die. A person who falls asleep under a walnut tree will wake up sick. A walnut tree will cause infertility in people and animals...

And the best part: A person who plants the walnut will die when the walnut tree trunk becomes as thick as the person't waist (or neck)...

Wow!!! Great example how the old pagan "good tree", the tree of Jove, was turned into an "evil tree" by the Christians. The part about "walnut tree makes people die" would sure stop people from planting walnuts, right? Well obviously it didn't stop Serbs doing it...

Serbs get the grandfather to plant a tree for his grandson. And because walnuts grow very slowly, the prospect of dying when the tree trunk became the same thickness as the planter's waist (neck) turned this "curse" into a "blessing"...🙂

I already said that the same custom of planting a walnut tree when a child was born once existed in Croatia's Slavonia region. In Dalmatia region of Croatia, people planted lemon when a child was born. And in some other parts of Croatia an oak was planted instead...

Oak was the main holy tree of the Slavs. It was the tree of the thunder god Perun, and therefore the equivalent of walnut, which was the tree of the Roman thunder god Jupiter, Jove...

In Serbia oak's importance and veneration was such that the Christian church eventually adopted it as a Christmas tree. But the church seem to have managed to stop Serbian people from planting the oak trees for newborn children...

This tradition however persisted in Russia, where when a boy was born, people planted an oak and when a girl was born people planted a birch tree... This is because they believed that oaks posses male energy and that birches posses female energy...

In Slovenia a linden tree, another Slavic holy tree, was planted when a child was born.

But this custom of planting trees for newborn children was not just found among Slavs...

In Aargau, Switzerland, an apple-tree was planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl, and the people thought that the child would flourish or dwindle with the tree...

In Belgium it was a tradition to plant an oak tree when a baby boy was born and a linden tree when a baby girl was born...

In some regions of Germany, a single fruit tree was planted for the birth of a child. It was a custom to plant an apple tree for a girl and a pear tree for a boy. Either parents or godparents can plant the tree but mostly it is the father who plants the tree for the newborn...

Sometimes the placenta (placenta) of the child was placed in the soil first, and then the tree was planted on top of it. And sometimes instead of planting a tree, the afterbirth was thrown out at the foot of a young tree, and the child was then believed to grow with the tree...

This is still very common in South Germany. The hospitals know about that and you get asked if you want to take the placenta home so you can bury it under the tree...

Finally, this belief about human - tree link, and the custom of planting trees when a child is born, is found in many other cultures around the world...

For instance, according to Babylonian Talmud, families would plant a tree in honour of the birth of a child. For a boy – they would plant a cedar sapling, and for a girl – a pine, cypress, or acacia tree. 

Sir James George Frazer talks about it in his book "The Golden Bough", in the chapter entitled "The External Soul in Plants"...

So, back to my apple tree. 

20 years ago I took my Irish wife to show her the place where I was born...And to show her my tree. It was still strong and healthy. The school was shut, crumbling. There were no children born any more in the village where I was born...

That was the last time I saw my twin...My father told me, that he heard from a woman that still lives in the village, that the tree still stands, next to a crumbling school building in the centre of now almost completely abandoned village...But for how much longer...