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Origin Of the Christmas Tree, View 2

Trees are very important to the American Christmas experience because a very long time ago the Christians decided that they needed a more aggressive recruiting technique to generate more Christians. During the early days of Christianity, while the faith was trying to spread from its base in the Mediterranean to the far reaches of Europe, the Christians noticed that it was easier to gain converts if they had holidays similar to those of the people they were trying to convert.

As missionaries wandered into the Pagan wildernesses (France and Germany) they found people who celebrated the winter solstice. These Pagans believed that as the days got shorter the sun was going away, and if it did not come back, all of humanity would die. So out into the forest they would go in search of the largest living things they could find. The largest living thing was an evergreen tree, proof that life still existed even in the dark of winter. In addition to the great tree, the celebration to bring back the sun involved getting as much light as possible. So, a large fire burned non-stop while torches lit the homes of the pagans, and the living evergreens were decorated with lights to lure the sun back into existence.

After the early Christians spread to Rome they adopted December 25th as Christmas day to increase the probability of converting the believers of Mithras, a god of soldiers, sailors, and merchants, who celebrated his birthday on the 25th of December. Therefore it was easy to show the natives to the north that they too had a winter solstice holiday. In an effort to be even more appealing to these Pagans, they to cut down large green trees and incorporated them into the worship of Christ.

By the Dark Ages Christianity was the prevailing religion in what had once been Pagan territory, but the celebration of Christ’s birth with large green pagan trees continued. It became a tradition that was passed from generation to generation, and over time when waves of Germanic Christians came across the ocean in search of a new life in a new land, it came too. The celebration of Christmas with trees spread to the new world, where many were happy to see this beautiful custom and adopt it as their own.

Email us if you have other thoughts on the history of the Christmas Tree

The Grant Beach Neighborhood Betterment Association is a group of citizens working together to maintain and improve the quality of living in our area. We meet monthly on a regular basis to address neighborhood concerns, and encourage residents to start smaller neighborhood watch groups in their block. We believe that people should actively participate as citizens in a democracy and as neighbors in in a community. We are a group of citizens interested in working together to maintain and improve the living quality of our neighborhood, motivate the city to address our concerns, be a spawning ground for neighborhood watch programs and build a sense of community among us. Working together, there is little that cannot be done, working apart there is little that can be done.

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