When they sang "Wie treu sind deine Blätter," J corrected them and said that Christmas trees don't have Blätter (leaves), but rather Nadeln (needles) and that it should be "Wie treu sind deine Nadeln." The piggies insisted that the words were right and sang it in his face, whereupon he squished their mouths shut. There followed about 10 minutes of horseplay where the piggies sang things like O Jamiebaum, O Jamiebaum, wie grün sind deine Ohren whenever he let their mouths out of his grip. He finally had to sit on them.
Thusnelda told J that people first started decorating Christmas trees in Germany a long time ago. She also told him that the custom was actually started by wild pigs, not humans. According to her, they would use their tusks to hook the ornaments and hang them up on the trees. "Das ist völliger Quatsch" (complete nonsense) J said.
I also read to J a bit about Christmas trees on Wikipedia, including a few sentences each from the Allemanic and Bavarian entries. I told him these were different kinds of German people spoke in certain areas of Germany and Switzerland. When I asked him if he could understand any of it, he said no.
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