Where did the idea of Christmas trees at Christmas time come from?

Question

Okay Christmas is Jesus' Birthday right? Where the heck did the Christmas tree tradition come from?

Answer 1

Actually christmas wasn't the original holiday. Christmas was put in place by the church to make people forget their old pagan traditions. Winter solstice December 21-22 was a day to celebrate the harvest and to worship the sun(not unlike december 25 where christians worship the son). The Wreath and evergreen tree tradition are hold overs from the pagans. They would put wreaths and evergreen trees up to signify that life would return to the earth. They would leave the wreath up until the first day of spring, the day that life begins coming back to the earth. When you start digging you see more and more of these holidays that the church put in place of a pagan holiday.

Answer 2

Usual nonsense about ancient pagan rites. There is no historical evidence for any pagan religion using trees in the way a Christmas tree is used. Christmas trees originated in central Europe some time around the 15th century - well into the Christian era. They used to be decorated with fruit (the apple idea is close). If you know the bible at all, you will remember there is a tree with fruit in the garden of Eden - the Paradise Tree. This tree played a central part in some mediaeval Christmas mystery plays which started with Adam and Eve and ended with the birth of the second Adam - Jesus Christ. This is the most probable origin of the Christmas tree - originally hung with fruit which was later replaced by the glass baubles we used now. Lights (earlier candles) and tinsel come later - the lights might represent the light of Christ coming into the world, - or they might just be pretty. Please remind your listeners that Christmas is essentially a Christian festival.

Answer 3

It's one of several pagan concepts that were "christianized".

"The Christmas tree is often explained as a Christianization of the ancient pagan idea that the evergreen tree represents a celebration of the renewal of life. In actuality, when the Roman Empire was converted enmasse to christianity, many cultures did not give up their pagan ideals and traditions and so they were incorporated into the Christmas tradition."

Answer 4

The fir tree has a long association with Christianity, it began in Germany almost 1,000 years ago when St Boniface, who converted the German people to Christianity, was said to have come across a group of pagans worshipping an oak tree. In anger, St Boniface is said to have cut down the oak tree and to his amazement a young fir tree sprung up from the roots of the oak tree. St Boniface took this as a sign of the Christian faith. But it was not until the 16th century that fir trees were brought indoors at Christmas time.

Answer 5

from the Pagans of northern europe. They would celebrate the winter solstice - the longest night of the year - by decorating evergreen trees with candles. the tree represented the continuation of nature through the dark of winter and the hope for spring to return.

Answer 6

ACTUALLY CHRISTMAS IS NOT JESUS' BIRTHDAY, AND THE IDEA OF WORSHIPPING TREES WAS IN PLACE HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEFORE CHRIST WAS BORN, (SEE JEREMIAH CHAP. 10 IN THE BIBLE) THIS TREE CUSTOM WAS ADOPTED INTO THE CHRISTMAS TRADITION MANY YEARS AFTER JESUS' DEATH.

Answer 7

From the traditions around celebrating Yule and the winter solstice that were around LONG before Christianity came along and took over all the symbols of nature and decided to make them represent other things. Here's one of many web sites about this:

http://www.fabulousfoods.com/holidays/xmas/treehistory.html

Happy reading.

Answer 8

OK,I saw this on jeopardy last night, apparently it's of german descent, the germans would decorate their trees with apples to represent the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.

Answer 9

check link below

Answer 10

It is the date that is traditionaly celebrated but it is not the day he was born.

The modern custom cannot be proved to be directly descended from pagan tradition. It can, however, be traced to 16th century Germany; Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (Marburg professor of European ethnology) identified as the earliest reference a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 which reports how a small fir was decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers, and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas day. Another early reference is from Basel, where the tailor apprentices carried around town a tree decorated with apples and cheese in 1597.

The city of Riga, Latvia, claims to be home of the first holiday tree; an octagonal plaque in the town square reads "The First New Year's Tree in Riga in 1510", in eight languages. Around this same time period, and subject to much debate as to whether the event occurred before the Riga holiday tree, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small tree in house to symbolize the way the stars shined at night. During the 17th century, the custom entered family homes. One Strasbourg priest, Johann Konrad Dannerhauer, complains about the custom as distracting from the Word of God.

By the early 18th century, the custom had become common in towns of the upper Rhineland, but it had not yet spread to rural areas. Wax candles are attested from the late 18th century. The Christmas tree remained confined to the upper Rhineland for a relatively long time. It was regarded as a Protestant custom by the Catholic majority along the lower Rhine and was spread there only by Prussian officials who were moved there in the wake of the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

In the early 19th century, the custom became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia. Princess Henrietta von Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816, and the custom spread across Austria in the following years. In France, the first Christmas tree was introduced in 1840 by the duchess of Orleans.

The Queen's Christmas tree at Osborne House. The engraving republished in Godey's Lady's Book, Philadelphia, December 1850In Britain, the Christmas tree was introduced by King George III's German Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz but did not spread much beyond the royal family. Queen Victoria as a child was familiar with the custom. In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the delighted 13-year-old princess wrote: "After dinner...we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room...There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees...". After her marriage to her German cousin, Prince Albert, the custom became even more widespread. In 1847, Prince Albert wrote: "I must now seek in the children an echo of what Ernest [his brother] and I were in the old time, of what we felt and thought; and their delight in the Christmas-trees is not less than ours used to be". The generous Prince Albert also presented large numbers of trees to schools and army barracks at Christmas. Images of the royal family with their Christmas tree at Osborne House were illustrated in English magazines, initially as a woodcut in the Illustrated London News of December 1848, and copied in the United States at Christmas 1850 (illustration, left). Such patriotic prints of the British royal family at Christmas celebrations helped popularise the Christmas tree in Britain and among the anglophile American upper class.

Several cities in the United States lay claim to that country's first Christmas tree. Windsor Locks, Connecticut, claims that a Hessian soldier put up a Christmas tree in 1777 while imprisoned at the Noden-Reed House, thus making it the home of the first Christmas tree in New England. The "First Christmas Tree in America" is also claimed by Easton, Pennsylvania, where German settlers purportedly erected a Christmas tree in 1816. In his diary, Matthew Zahm of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, recorded the use of a Christmas tree in 1821 -- leading Lancaster to also lay claim to the first Christmas Tree in America. [3]

Many cities, towns, and department stores put up public Christmas trees outdoors for everyone to enjoy, such as the Rich's Great Tree in Atlanta, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City and the large Christmas tree at Victoria Square in Adelaide. During most of the 1970s and 1980s, the largest Christmas tree in the world was put up every year on the property of The National Enquirer in Lantana, Florida. This tradition grew into one of the most spectacular and celebrated events in the history of southern Florida, but was discontinued on the death of the paper's founder in the late 1980s.

Taiwanese aboriginals, tutored by Christian missionaries, celebrate with trees (Cunninghamia lanceolata) outside their homes.In some cities festivals are organised around the decoration and display of multiple trees as charity events. In some cases the trees represent special commemorative gifts, such as in Trafalgar Square in London, where the City of Oslo, Norway presents a tree to the people of London as a token of appreciation for the British support of Norwegian resistance during the Second World War; in Boston, where the tree is a gift from the province of Nova Scotia, in thanks for rapid deployment of supplies and rescuers to the 1917 ammunition ship explosion that leveled the city of Halifax; and in Newcastle upon Tyne, where the 15-m-tall main civic Christmas tree is an annual gift from the city of Bergen, Norway, in thanks for the part played by soldiers from Newcastle in liberating Bergen from Nazi occupation.

The United States' National Christmas Tree is lit each year south of the White House in Washington, D.C. Today, the lighting of the National Tree is part of what has become a major holiday event at the White House. President Jimmy Carter lit only the crowning star atop the Tree in 1979 in honor of the Americans being held hostage in Iran; in 1980, the tree was fully lit for only 417 seconds, one second for each day the hostages had been in captivity.

The term Charlie Brown Christmas tree can be used to describe any sad-looking, malformed little tree. Some tree buyers intentionally adopt such trees, feeling sympathetic to their plights. The term comes from the appearance of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree in the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas.

In New Zealand, Pohutukawa trees are described as 'natural Christmas trees', as they bloom at Christmas time, and they look like Christmas trees with their red flowers and green foliage.