The Christian History of the Christmas Tree

It is something of a fad among the detractors and critics of Christianity to accuse modern Christians of being hypocrites on some topic because they denounce it as being against God’s commandments but then celebrate Christmas with Christmas trees and just everyone knows that Christmas trees are pagan in origin. The logic behind this criticism is to suggest that Christians are irrational and do not apply all the parts of their faith equally and that they are ignorant of the true origins of their faith. This is often used as a way to try and mock and humiliate Christians, often used as just one more example of their supposed incredulity, stupidity, and foolishness. Often this is connected to attempts to argue that Christian opposition to something has less to do with their faith and more of their hatred. An example I have encountered has been people arguing with me that Christians have no problem engaging in pagan tree worship during Christmas time despite the Bible’s forbidding of idols but they refuse to accept gay people because homosexual romantic and sexual activity is a sin. The accusation is that Christians aren’t interested in following the Bible, they’re interested in hatred and their having Christmas Trees is just one more proof of this “fact.”

But, is it true? Are Christmas Trees of pagan, non-Christian origins? Are Christians participating in pagan rites, or the remnants of them, by erecting Christmas Trees in their homes? In this article, I will answer these questions from two major angles. First, I will evaluate the logic (or lack thereof) behind the argument that doing something remotely similar to how X people may have done it to see if that argument is meaningful at all. Second, I will be investigating the history of Christmas Trees to see if their actual history backs up the claim that they are of pagan origin.

The Philosophical Argument

The idea that group X did a thing and now when you do a similar thing then your really doing what they did is an extremely poor argument. Just apply this logic to other examples. Pagans pray so praying is pagan. Pagans sacrificed animals, so sacrificing animals is pagan. Pagans have temples and holy sites, so having temples and holy sites is pagan. Pagans practice ritual cleansing with water designed to wash them pure, so baptism is clearly pagan. I could keep going, but I believe I’ve made my point. We cannot merely point to similarities and assert that they have the same meaning. Religious customs vary from place to place and people to people, but if you look hard enough you’ll find similar customs in radically different cultures. No culture ever developed in a perfect vacuum uninfluenced by outside societies and peoples. The question isn’t where these customs came from, because you can often draw lines of influence across continental distances and historical epochs if you’re investigative enough, as we will see below. The question isn’t about where the custom came from but about the purpose behind the custom. What is the custom meant to focus the minds and lives of the people carrying out the custom upon? What messages does your participation in the custom communicate to society at large?

The point of the Christmas Tree is pretty clear. It is a custom meant to recall for modern Christians the religious ideals of Christianity. Christians imbue the different elements of Christmas – the holly, tinsel, bells, evergreens, etc. – with deeply Christian meaning designed to reflect the Christian’s faith in the Ministry, Atonement, and imminent Return of Jesus Christ in every aspect of Christmas time. So, in a very real sense, it doesn’t matter where the custom of bring evergreens into your home came from. What matters is what meaning is attached to them and what that meaning is meant to focus the faithful believer’s mind on. For Christians, plants have a variety of religious meanings. Plants have often been the symbols of the Resurrection as they die and are reborn in the cycle of the seasons just as humans age and die with the cycles of life to be resurrected when Christ returns. Trees are often symbols of eternal life because they live such long lives compared to humans. Evergreens are symbols of eternal youth as their leaves never age. The Christmas Tree then serves as a symbol of the promises of immortality and eternal life that Jesus Christ has promised all those who follow Him.

Symbols are powerful things, communicating complex ideas in ways that can enrich your life by studying their many layers and relationships. But first you have to impregnate them with those meanings before they can help illuminate the way you see the world. And the same symbols have different meanings to different people, not just across cultures and countries, but within them as well. The symbolism of Christmas is no different. This is why atheists who celebrate Christmas aren’t celebrating Christ or Christianity when they erect a Christmas Tree in their homes. Nor are they celebrating ancient pagan rites. They’re taking social customs that they grew up with and removing the religious aspects from them in order to create a celebration that aligns with their own beliefs. Symbols, rituals, and customs are what you make of them, not what others made of them. So, no. Christmas and Christmas Trees are not pagan in source, nature, or purpose, no matter what their historical origins because the people using the symbols of Christmas are not pagans just as atheists aren’t Christian because they give gifts to one another on Christmas.

The History of Christmas Trees

Now, on the topic of what historical evidence exists for the claim that Christmas Trees originated with Germanic pagan customs. There are three categories that I will look at in order to evaluate the idea that by having Christmas Trees as part of their religious customs Christians are mimicking pagan practices. First, I will evaluate the presence of evergreens in the religious practices of the Old Testament. Second, I will look at the Feast Day of Adam and Eve for the antecedent of the modern Christmas Tree. Finally we will look at when the first Christmas Trees came into use and what this has to tell us about their origins.

Old Testament Influences

The first thing to note is that the history of placing evergreens in holy places, such as churches, goes much farther back than Medieval Germany. Evergreens were used in ancient Jewish worship and were even present in the Holy Temple:

[The Aleppo pine] is the eẓ shemen (‘oil tree’) of the Bible, as it is still called (in Aramaic) by the Jews of Kurdistan, and is so called because of its high turpentine content. Isaiah (41:19) mentions this tree among those that will fructify the wilderness on the path of the redeemed. In the time of Nehemiah its branches were used for covering the sukkah (Neh. 8:15). Ben Sira 50:10 compares the high priest to its tall evergreen flourishing top. In the Temple the cherubim and the doors were made from its wood (1 Kings 6:23, 32). …They were also used as firewood for the altar (Tam. 2:3).”

^{Israel Environment & Nature: Pine}

Here we see the native pine of Palestine used in numerous important ways in Jewish ritual life. The sukkah is an outdoor booth that is built then, and now, by traditional Jews, as part of the Feast of Sukkot, or, as many of my readers may know it, the Feast of Tabernacles. Sukkot is one of the celebrations commanded by God and is meant to commemorate and celebrate God’s liberation of the Israelite slaves from Egyptian tyranny and their living in temporary shelters as they journeyed through the desert for 40 years. That pine branches would be used during the era of restoration during Nehemiah’s leadership is a sign of the ritual importance that pine boughs could play in the lives of ancient Jewish people. Then there is the fact that in the Temple the cherubim on/with the Ark of the Covenant formed the Mercy Seat, the very throne of God on Earth, as well as the doors through which one passed to enter into the Divine Presence, were made of pine wood. Finally, one of the woods most used for the burning of sacrifices to God, for purification, the expiation of sins, and salvation, was the evergreen pine wood of the Aleppo pine.

The earliest Christians, who were Jewish, would have certainly known all these things. They would have lived them. One can almost see Peter celebrating Sukkot by building a booth outside his home and overlaying it with pine boughs and spending the week praising God with his family within it. The idea of using pine in ritual use would therefore not have been foreign to them or their families. Likewise, those who followed them in the faith could easily see that there were ancient Hebrew traditions rooted in the Old Testament that saw the evergreen used in the ritual practice of God’s followers and in His holiest of places, the sacrificial altar of the Temple and the Mercy Seat itself. By using it in their own religious customs and for their own religious purposes they were not copying the pagans around them but drawing up their oldest heritage that predated their interactions with pagan ritual by millennia.

The Feast Day of Adam and Eve

Something that may surprise Latter-day Saints is that Adam and Eve are celebrated as saints in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, both of which are important for us to understand in order for us to discern the origin of the Christmas Tree. The common narrative is that Roman Catholics began to make Christmas Trees as they converted pagan Germans and Christianized their pagan traditions. The story of St. Boniface destroying the Oak of Thor is often told in relation to the idea that Christians basically took over Germanic or Druidic practices and made them Christian, hence Thor’s tree becomes Christ’s tree. The problem is that this ignores the fact that the Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas by having Christmas Trees even though they never had any relationship to German paganism. If Christmas trees emerge out of Germanic paganism then how is it that Orthodox Christians in Russia, Greece, the Middle East and Africa all celebrate Christmas with a Christmas Tree despite the Orthodox Church splitting from the Roman Catholics in 1054 AD in what is now known as the Great Schism, nearly 500 years before the traditional story of the pagan origin of the Christmas Tree has them emerging in Germany in the 1500s? The answer is simple – there is an origin to this common practice that comes from somewhere else other than the pagan forests of pre-Christian Germany. This origin are the religious customs of the Feast Day of Adam and Eve.

Orthodox Christians, sometimes called Eastern Christians because their religious “traditions of belief and worship developed in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa, were the first to honor Adam and Eve as saints. Their cult spread from eastern lands to western Europe during the Middle Ages, becoming quite popular in Europe by the year 1000 AD.” The feast day was held on Dec. 24th, on Christmas Eve, and during the feast the people celebrating it would reenact the Fall of Adam and Eve by presenting a Paradise Play. Here is a basic description of a Paradise Play:

[It] depicted the story of creation and the fall as described in the book of Genesis. A “Paradise Tree” represented the tree in the garden of Eden and was central to the play. People would hang apples on the tree, to symbolize the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden. The play ended with the promise of the birth of the Savior through the Incarnation.

This Paradise Tree is believed by many to be the origin of the Christmas tree. Although some legends attribute the origins of the Christmas tree to Martin Luther, and others to ancient pagan traditions, historical evidence shows that the Christmas tree developed from the Paradise Tree tradition, years before the birth of Luther. In 1419 a guild of bakers in the Alsace region of Germany decided to decorate their “Paradise Trees” with sweets formed into beautiful shapes.

The earliest Paradise Trees also had unleavened wafers on them to remind people of the communion wafers they received from church. In this way you had the symbol of death – the apple – and the symbol of life – the sacrificed body of Christ – on the same tree. Eventually these became the cookies used in 1419 as mentioned above, which in turn began the long association of Christmas with sweets. The point of this celebration was to mentally and emotionally prepare people for the celebration of Christmas by reminding them why the birth of Christ was so important by re-teaching them the events and repercussions of the Fall. The idea of a lit Christmas Tree and the singing of carols is attributed to Protestant reformer and religious revolutionary Martin Luther whom tradition says was the first person to put candles in a (most likely then) Paradise Tree as a way to help illustrate the Light of Christ to his children.

As the Medieval waned and the Modern Era took hold the Feast of Adam and Eve became a thing of the past. In the Eastern Orthodox Churches Adam and Eve began to be celebrated on the last Sunday before Lent and in the Roman Catholic West the Paradise Play likewise became a thing of the past, though in neither places were all the trappings or customs of the Paradise Play lost. This is especially true of the Paradise Tree. That brings us to the development of the Christmas Tree as we know it now.

The Christmas Tree Today

Though the Feast of Adam and Eve died out as a major celebration over the centuries the symbolism and customs it inspired have lived on. According to the Reverend Francis X. Weiser, author of the book Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs it is from the Paradise Tree that the Christmas Tree developed. (See. pg. 59) From the description of the Paradise Tree as given above we can see how this makes sense. The Paradise Tree was an evergreen tree erected on Christmas Eve upon which were placed red apples and communion wafers, flat crackers, which eventually became flat cookies to remind the people of the salvation that comes only through the sacrifice of Christ. Thus we have a green tree with red ball-shaped decorations and treats upon it – the basic image of the Christmas Tree. Even as the feast day became a thing of the past, the joyful customs that were part of it stayed around and were given new religious meanings in order to make them relevant to the way people began to celebrate Christmas differently than they had before.

The earliest reference to what we would think of today as a modern Christmas Tree comes from 1605, “At Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlours of Strasbourg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-colored paper, apples, wafers, gold foil, sweets, etc.” As the years passed more things were added as decorations – such as nuts, thread, pretzels, and tinsel. In the 1880s a group of German glassblowers began to add hand blown colored glass balls as decorations on their trees, perhaps finally replacing the red apples of Adam and Eve in the process, though the connection between red glass balls and red apples seems obvious. By this point Christmas had already been popularized in Great Britain when Prince Albert, the German husband of English Queen Victoria, put up a Christmas Tree in Windsor Castle in 1841. Similarly, in the USA we see Christmas being celebrated with Christmas Trees first among German immigrants in the 1850s, though it doesn’t become general until much later (when Kris Kringle – then still the Christkindl, or Christ child, and not Santa Claus- also starts to catch on.) By 1900 we have the Christmas Tree and Christmas celebration that we know today.

Not A Pagan Practice

In summary, we find the usage of evergreens to represent God, life, eternal youth, sacrifice, resurrection, etc. to have antecedents that go all the way back to the ancient Israelite Temple of the Old Testament. It is therefore no surprise that the earliest form of the Christmas Tree in Christianity actually comes out of the East, not the West, with the spread of the Eastern Orthodox commemoration of the Feast Day of Adam and Eve on Christmas Eve. A central part of this celebration was the usage of an evergreen, almost certainly whatever type could be found locally, decorated with red apples and communion wafers to commemorate the Fall of Adam and Eve and the redemption of man through the Atonement of Christ. This custom of a Paradise Play and a Paradise Tree has nothing to do with pagan practices – Germanic, Druidic, or any other – and is instead rooted directly in the Bible. Over time the Feast of Adam and Eve waned but the religious customs it introduced remained and grew. Soon the wafers were replaced with sweet treats and more decorations were added to make the tree more fun and beautiful. It finally spread into Great Britain (and its then existing and soon to be colonies) and the United States through the influences of Germans who had grown up with Christmas Trees themselves.

Thus, while we can debate the commercialization of Christmas and the robbing of the day of its holy purpose, turning it into a celebration of materialism instead of commemorating the birth of the Christ into the world, there is one thing we can say with a great basis of authority. Neither the Christmas Tree nor its accoutrements are pagan in origin. The Christmas Tree originated in Eastern Christianity, not out of a synthesis of Norse or Druidic worship with Roman Catholicism. The assumption that Christmas Trees are pagan in origin is the result of not tracing the history of Christmas Trees farther back than the Germanic influence upon Christmas that came about at a much later date. It ignores that the Eastern Christians, who never were influenced by Germanic paganism, were erecting Paradise Trees long before they became popular in the West, that these customs actually spread from East to West, from the Middle East and Eastern Europe into Germany and Western Europe and not from Germany and Western Europe, and that the Orthodox Christians continue to erect Christmas Trees in their homes and churches today. The ultimate source of the Christmas Tree is in Eastern Orthodox Christian practice and not in Germanic pagan practices.