[78-L] O Maryland, My Christmas Tree

[Gene Baron]

As a lifelong Marylander, I guess I better chime in.  Yes the state uses 'O
Tannenbaum' as its official song -- not sure why, but there was and still is
a large community originally from Germany (at least one church here in
Baltimore still has a German-language service every week, and there were
many German restauants (mostly gone now) up until about 40 or so years
ago.)  Interestingly, the words to the song are of a very anti-Northern and
pro-Confederate bent -- even though Maryland never seceded and remained in
the Union during the US Civil War, it was heavily split between pro-Union
and pro-Confederate sympathies.  There have been attempts to change the
words but none have gotten anywhere.

Gene (one of the 'Northern scum' mentioned in the song)
gene.baron at gmail.com



On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:17 PM, David Breneman
<david_breneman at yahoo.com>wrote:

> --- On Tue, 6/22/10, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> > Which came first..O Tannenbaum or My Maryland? And when?
>
> I take this to mean that "My Maryland" has the same melody
> as "O Tannenbaum."  The German melody (although not with the
> modern lyrics) was written in the mid-late 1500s.  I guess
> that predates the state of Maryland, although some of those
> eastern state are getting pretty geriatric.  :-)
>  .
>
>
>
>
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