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treetops

On-Yomi: ショウ — Kun-Yomi: こずえ、くすのき

Elements:

treetops, tree, wood, resemblance, spark, candle, small, little, moon, month, flesh, part of the body

Heisig story:

As the days grow shorter and shorter, or so the northern European myth goes, the fear grows that the sun will take its leave of us altogether, abandoning the world to total darkness. Fixing candles to the branches of evergreen trees, it was believed, would lure the sun back (like things attracting like things), whence the custom of the lighted tree that eventually found its way into our Christmas customs. The story is a lot longer and more complex than that, but it should help to fix the image of climbing high up into the treetops to fix candles on the tree.

Koohii stories:

1) [sethimayne] 30-9-2007(184): At Christmas time, on the treetops, people used to place great big candles (Now we usually place a star instead).

2) [Tatiana] 22-10-2006(46): If you cut off the treetops, they still resemble the trees they used to be part of. Treetops=tree resemblance.

3) [astgtciv] 14-4-2007(25): A gigantic candle is standing to the right of the tree, the flame rising higher than the treetops.

4) [Ji_suss] 24-8-2008(17): Doesn't really mean treetops. It means the end of a branch. In English, the name for each year's new growth at the end of every branch is a "candle". Same in Japanese.

5) [LeoOra] 28-2-2008(12): The tops of the trees, as in the fractal theory, resembles a whole tree if you look from afar.

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