This story begins in the year 722.

It takes place in Germany, and it involves a Norse god, a human sacrifice, an axe-wielding monk, and a tree.

Actually, two trees, but we'll get to that in due course.

The monk was a young Benedictine named Boniface. Later, he'd become an archbishop and known

as the Apostle of Germany. Later still, he'd be martyred and eventually named a saint. But in 722,

he was a missionary, and a leading figure in the Anglo-Saxon mission to the Germanic parts of the

Frankish Empire, and he was very effective at evangelizing

and converting people to Christianity. And so the story goes, that on Christmas Eve, Boniface

and his fellow missionaries were approaching a village where the inhabitants practiced a gruesome

wintertime ritual. They would gather around an old oak tree that they had named the Thunder Oak in honor

of the god Thor, and they would sacrifice a human being, typically a small child, to Thor.

Well, Boniface wasn't having any of that. And so, he came up with a plan to prevent the ritual

from being carried out, destroy the Thunder oak, and convert the heathens

all at once. His fellow missionaries were convinced that he was likelyer to get himself killed

than carry out the plan successfully, but Boniface was determined. They arrived not a moment

too soon. The villagers had already gathered around the tree, the child was laid out for sacrifice,

and the executioner was ready to do his dastardly work, and with a stone hammer resembling that of Thor, no less.

But Boniface used his staff to block the executioner's blow mid-swing and miraculously break

the hammer. Then Boniface grabbed an axe and started chopping away at the thunder oak,

and according to the poet Henry Van Dyke's 1897 telling of the story,

a strong whirling wind passed over the treetops. It gripped the oak by its branches and tore it

from its roots. Backward it fell like a ruined tower, groaning and crashing as it split

...