The Annual Christmas Tree Festival at Crediton Parish Church takes place from Thursday 3 December – Sunday 6 December. Opening hours will be 11am – 6pm (Thurs & Fri). 10.30am – 7pm (Sat) and 2 – 5pm (Sun). Admission is free and tours to the Governors’ Room and Bell Tower will be on offer at set times during the day.

The Church of the Holy Cross and indeed the name of Crediton are both inextricably linked with St Boniface.

Boniface was born in Crediton in 680AD into a Saxon family. He was baptised Wynfrith or Winfrid (from the Saxon words wine – friend and frith – peace) . His first biographer, Willibald, writing in the C8th, records that he received his early education in a Benedictine monastery in Exeter.  For many years he had felt called to missionary work and started this, at the age of thirty-six in Friesland – now part of Northern Holland, in 716. His first mission was unsuccessful, and he returned to Wessex where he was offered the job of Abbot of Nursling. He declined this, and went to Rome where, in May 719, Pope Gregory II commissioned him as a missionary to Germany. He was given the name Boniface, meaning maker of good or good deeds.

In 722 he was consecrated a bishop – without a see. His remit was “to preach to the heathen east of the Rhine”. In 723 he visited the Frankish court and was taken under the protection of the king, Charles Martel (Martel meaning hammer). Over the next two years Boniface’s mission continued in Hesse and Thuringia where he established convents and started to create a disciplined system of churches. A legend of this period is the best known of the whole of the saint’s life. On his arrival in Hesse, among half-believers with a lot of residual pagan beliefs and influences around them, Boniface struck at the root of pagan superstition by a single act. He publicly announced in advance that he would destroy their gods. Armed with an axe he approached a sacred tree, the giant oak of Geismar, dedicated to Thor. After some effort, he felled the oak, and its branches lay on the ground in the shape of a cross. In its descent, sections of the oak had crushed every other tree around except a single small fir tree (this was possibly the origin of the Christmas tree).

In 741 Boniface founded the abbey of Fulda with his young disciple, (Saint) Sturmi and in 745 he was given Mainz as his cathedral, being created Primate of all Germany by Pope Zachary. In 753, Boniface set off for further missionary work in Friesland, and in 754 his life ended in martyrdom at the hands of a pagan band, who killed him as he was reading to a group of new converts on Pentecost Sunday. He would not allow his companions to defend him. His body was taken to Fulda, where it still rests.