Brussels has a great many festivals, and one of them is a city carrying a tree through its own streets against a deadline. It happens on the same date every year, it has happened since 1308, and the reason it started was an argument about beer.
The short answer
The Meyboom — from the Dutch for “tree of joy” — is the planting of a beech tree in central Brussels every 9 August, the eve of St Lawrence’s Day. It has been performed annually since 1308, the tree must be standing before five o’clock, and it commemorates a medieval quarrel between Brussels and Leuven over a tax on beer.
A fight over a tax on beer
The folklore places the origin in 1213. A wedding party was being held at a tavern outside the Brussels city walls when men from Leuven, the rival city up the road, arrived to disrupt it — the dispute, in the version that has come down to us, concerned the taxation of beer sold at establishments beyond the walls.
A city guild, the Companions of St Lawrence, happened to be present and drove the attackers off. The Duke of Brabant rewarded the guild with corporate status and a standing privilege: the right to plant a tree in the city every year, in perpetuity.
The privilege was not exercised regularly until 1308, which is the year the tradition properly counts from. The documented account of the Meyboom is careful to note that the 1213 battle is folklore rather than established fact. The 1308 date, and the unbroken run since, are not in dispute.
It is a very Belgian founding story: a tax, a beer, a fight, and a tree.
Why a tax on beer was worth fighting over
A brawl about beer duty sounds like a small thing to build eight centuries of ceremony on. In thirteenth-century Brabant it was not.
Beer was not a leisure product. Water of uncertain quality made weak beer the ordinary drink of most people on most days, brewed and consumed at volume, and the duty levied on it was a major and dependable source of municipal income. Cities fought over the right to collect it, and taverns outside the walls — beyond the reach of the town’s excise — were a standing provocation to whoever was owed the money.
Brussels and Leuven were also direct rivals within the Duchy of Brabant, competing for trade, status and ducal favour. A dispute over where beer could be sold untaxed was a dispute about which city’s authority ran where. That is the argument the Meyboom commemorates, and it is why the prize for winning it was a civic privilege rather than a payment.
What happens on 9 August
A beech is selected outside the city — it must be leafy, at least 600 kilograms, and twelve to thirteen metres tall. It is felled and brought into Brussels, where the day’s procession forms around it.
The tree is carried by the Bûûmdroegers, the tree bearers, on their shoulders through the streets. With them come the Poepedroegers and a family of processional giants — the enormous costumed figures that appear across Belgian and northern French civic festivals. Onlookers take small branches and leaves from the tree as they pass, for luck.
The destination is the corner of the Rue des Sables and the Rue du Marais, in the Marais-Jacqmain quarter, where the tree is stood upright and decorated. Then, as one might expect, the city drinks.
The date is not arbitrary either. 9 August is the eve of the feast of St Lawrence, the saint the guild took its name from, and the whole event is built on his calendar rather than on the agricultural year that gives most maypole traditions their date. That is part of why the “mey” in the name misleads: this is a saint’s-day observance that happens to involve a tree, not a spring rite that drifted through the calendar into August.
The five o’clock rule
The tree must be standing before 5pm. This is the part everyone remembers, and it is not decorative — the deadline is the whole competitive structure of the thing.
Miss it, and by tradition the advantage passes to Leuven: the Louvanistes would be entitled to claim the privilege, and with it the tradition. Popular retellings put it more darkly and say Brussels would be cursed for the coming year. Either way, the point is the same. Eight centuries on, a city still runs a tree through its streets against a clock because of a grudge with the town twenty-five kilometres east.
It has never been missed.
Why it survived
Traditions of this age usually survive as re-enactments. The Meyboom did not stop and get revived; it simply continued, through wars, occupations and epidemics, as an unbroken civic habit maintained by the people who inherit it.
In 2008 UNESCO recognised it, inscribing it as part of the “Processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France” entry on its list of intangible cultural heritage — the same listing that covers the giant figures that walk with the tree.
Those giants are worth a word of their own. Across Belgium and northern France, towns maintain enormous wicker-and-cloth figures, carried or wheeled by people hidden inside, each with a name and a history and a fixed place in its town’s calendar. They are not decorations hired in for the day; they belong to the community that walks them. The Meyboom’s giants are part of that wider tradition, which is what UNESCO actually listed — not one tree in one city, but a whole regional habit of carrying your own history through the streets once a year.
The bar that took the name
Meyboom Brasserie, on Lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas, was named after it. The founders’ account on the restaurant’s own About page describes the 1213 beer tax, the 1308 holiday, the tree bearers and the five o’clock deadline, and translates the name as “tree of joy” — the same story told above, which is where the bar took its name from.
The brasserie has since closed. This site is an archive of it, and its About page preserves the founders’ telling in their own words.
Frequently asked questions
What does Meyboom mean?
It is Dutch, and it is usually rendered “tree of joy”. Despite appearances the “mey” does not refer to the month of May; the planting is in August.
When is the Meyboom planted?
9 August every year, the eve of St Lawrence’s Day — the saint whose guild, by tradition, earned the privilege in the first place.
Where is the tree planted?
At the intersection of the Rue des Sables and the Rue du Marais in central Brussels. The location has not always been fixed; the modern site is in the Marais-Jacqmain district.
What happens if the tree is not up by five o’clock?
By tradition the right to the Meyboom would pass to Leuven. It has not happened. Some tellings substitute a curse on the city for the coming year.
Is the Meyboom UNESCO-listed?
Yes, since 2008, as part of the “Processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France” inscription on the intangible cultural heritage list.
The short version
A tavern brawl over beer duty in 1213 earned a Brussels guild the right to plant a tree. Since 1308 the city has done it every 9 August, against a five o’clock deadline, with giants walking alongside. It is the oldest tradition Brussels has, and it exists because of beer.
Related: what a Belgian brasserie actually is and the Belgian beer styles worth knowing.