Every Christmas season, in a show of piety of sorts, certain types of Protestants have the urge to expound on the various “pagan” aspects of Christmas celebrations. One of the main focuses of attack is the Christmas tree. They like to tell us that pagans of old used to drag in a tree into the house, decorate it, so little pagan children could sit around it, in wonder, and sing songs like, “O heathen tree, how heathen tree, how lovely are your branches.” And the story goes, the Catholics peeked through the window, liked this pagan practice and said among themselves, “This looks like a great idea! Why not steal it and switch the name to ‘Christmas tree.’” And that was that. So now, every time you put up a Christmas tree, you are in fact being a pagan, because the Bible does not mention Christmas trees, whereas the pagans put up such trees in December, to celebrate their winter solstice, or some such heathen thing.
Sadly, in the English-speaking world, this assumption still passes for irrefutable “history,” forever repeated. But let’s unpack it, shall we?
First, in which ancient “pagan” text do we find detailed instructions on putting up a tree inside the house and decorating it, in order to participate in heathendom? Which pagan god is such a tree supposed to honor? The long answer to both questions is: None.
Great efforts are made to contrive some sort of linkage to the “Saturnalia” festival, when supposedly green boughs were used in some sort of way. We have no decoration manuals from ancient Rome that instruct Roman matrons on the finer points of “Saturnalia” ornamentation, nor any indications of Romans putting up evergreen trees in their atria—but for the eager-beaver certain type of Protestant, the mention of “green boughs” triggers pagan associations: the Catholics “stole” customs from the Romans and foisted them upon unsuspecting “early” Christians, in order to corrupt “real” Christianity and make it “pagan,” since that is what Catholics are wont to do.
These “reasonings” and “proofs” about Christmas celebrations being “pagan” are 18th and 19th century fabrications, which we will get to a bit later on; and especially there is James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which set out to “document” pagan hangovers in 19th century modernity. Frazer believed that “pagan” “superstitions” persist through time, changing only their appearance but never their content. His job was to point out all this “pagan” content. The influence of this strange book is immeasurable, because it has constructed this bizarre Western habit of mind that loves to imagine the persistence of ancient “paganism” in modern Christianity, when we know so little about what the ancients actually believed. And yet The Golden Bough has made us all believe that there was such a thing as pagan “religion,” which somehow imitated exactly what we know “religion,” to be, when the only religion we really know is Christianity. In other words, Frazer somehow channeled Legos, before there were any Legos, for he gathered together disperate bits and pieces, which he found scattered about in ancient texts and anthrolopolical reports, and worked them all into an associative pattern, which he labeled pagan “religion.” What relation these bits and pieces had to one another, let alone to entirely different cultures (ancient and otherwise), Frazer forgot to tell us. This structuring of what the ancients might have believed would go far, for it also proceeded to construct various other “world religions” encountered by the West. Thus, what we like to call “Hinduism,” “Buddhism,” “Sikhism,” and so forth—are all 19th century, Western constructs. But let us not wander too far afield.
At this time point, it might be instructive to have a look at the history of this anti-Christmas-tree campaign. The larger context is the Protestant rejection of celebrating any Christian feast day, declared a “superstition,” because the Catholics did it. Where did this approach come from?
For that, we will briefly have to go back to the “Big Bang” of Protestantism, namely, a disgruntled monk named Martin Luther. Setting aside the finer points of his anti-Catholic agenda, the thrust of his argument is rather simple and goes like this: Over time, “true” Christianity has slowly been infiltrated by paganism, and therefore has become thoroughly corrupt. The “secret agent” doing all this corrupting is the Pope and his various henchmen who use all this paganism to keep honest people enslaved by way of “superstitions,” of which the Catholic Church is filled to the brim. But fear not. Dr. Luther is here to clean Christianity up and bring it back to its pure, pristine self (sauber machen!). Enroll in his easy-peasy program, called the “Reformation,” and you too can become a clean, pure, “authentic” Christian. Note the term, “reformation,” to remake, to re-form (see Legos above). Yes, alas and alack, “Build Back Better.” This is a form of neurosis—in Protestantism, Nature is sin and Grace destroys nature.
In other words, Protestantism was the world’s first eugenics program—which worked to “purify,” by hacking off “corruption.” This is the very logic of eugenics, is it not? And the habit of mind this created in the English=speaking world has led to many strange places, like social justice and thus Wokeism, which are all projects that seek to purify and clean up. And this is also the context of the present-day “cancel culture,’ which aspires to get rid of everything “oppressive” (which is simply another way of saying, “inauthentic”). Thank you, Dr. Luther!
Then, John Calvin specifically pointed to Christmas when he stated that observing one day as holy was a form of idolatry and thus to be condemned and avoided. Therefore, The First Book of Discipline of 1560, of the Presbyterian Church, condemned the celebration of any holy day in the Reformed parts of Scotland and stipulated severe penalties for anyone showing any sign of celebration, including Christmas greetings, or having a special dinner. (Mind you, we’re talking about Scotland, and there is only that much you can do to a good haggis on any festive day).
Parts of Germany, Britain, Holland and then especially America eventually became ground zero of Protestant zeal. Such zeal thankfully died out in Europe, but it thrives in America, where Protestant “eugenicists” continue to root out paganism and seek out that elusive Utopia: “pure” faith. This “purity” is always affirmed via anti-Catholic rhetoric and the Black Legend, because it’s easy to do so. Just mention “Catholic” and the rest takes care of itself in “Evangelical” America.
But how did America hang on to this “eugenicist” zeal for so long? Very simply because of one date—1644, when Christmas was canceled.
On Thursday December 19, 1644, the English Parliament passed An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament for the better Observation of the Feast of the Nativity of Christ. This was the time when all of England was in the grips of a civil war, in which the forces of Cromwell (who sought to create a Puritan republic, and succeeded) rebelled and fought against King Charles I (who was defeated and beheaded by the same Parliament).
Here, notice why the “Puritans” are called “puritans”—they are the “pure ones,” purified of all “pagan” corruption and “superstitions;” thus, “real” Christians.
This Ordinance cancelled all celebrations that were traditionally associated with Christmas, Easter, and all other Christian holy days (the root for the term, “holidays”), which meant that the Anglosphere was deeply secularized. December 25th was to be an ordinary day, with no observance whatsoever that might mark it as special, as a holy day. Those caught marking December 25th as different from other days, via food, wish, clothing or decoration were fined, arrested, publicly humiliated, and socially ostracized.
These Puritans were the largest group that emigrated to America, and they came in order to establish a society, in the New World, in which the precepts of Puritanism would be foremost (a Utopia); and because they were isolated by two oceans and then a Revolution, their habit of mind persisted in America and prospers to this day in its various “Evangelical” iterations, which therefore is still obsessed with being staunchly anti-Catholic in order to be “pure.”
The influence of this Ordinance held firm in the English-speaking world for the next two hundred years. It would take the efforts of Prince Albert, in the 1840s, to merge once again celebration and joyfulness with the birth of Jesus—but at first only within the private settings of the royal family. And it would take Charles Dickens’ pro-Christmas propaganda novel, A Christmas Carol (1843), to re-introduce and popularize Christmas celebrations within the larger society, in which he succeeded beyond expectation. Thus, these two men finally put an end to the influence of the Ordinance.
However, the seed planted by Luther yet grows strong, because describing and explaining “pagan superstitions” embedded in Christianity is a veritable cottage industry in America, the roots of which also go back to German Pietism of the 18th century and then to scientism of the 19th century.
The Lutheran and Pietist theologian, Daniel Ernst Jablonski (1660—1741), was the first to systematically organize this supposed “paganization of Christianity,” by maintaining that the early Christians went about picking up all kinds of pagan superstitions and giving them Christian meaning, or overlay, a process encouraged by the Catholic Church. Once this started, there was no looking back, as more and more pagan “accretions” became attached to Christianity. Therefore, the Protestant project was that much more urgent, since “real” Christianity had become stifled beneath all this pagan overlay, and needed to be extracted and cleaned up.
His son, Paul Ernst Jablonski (1693—1757), continued and expanded his father’s work. It was Paul Ernst who first stated that Christmas was the Roman winter solstice celebration and linked it to the “Saturnalia.” He said the Christians appropriated this “Saturnalia” so more Romans would convert. The logic of such a ploy seems bizarre, but let’s leave that aside. Paul Ernst had no historical basis for making this assertion, but it was a very powerful one, since it has endured to this day. No serious historian today makes such an assertion, since who knows what this “Saturnalia” was and when it even started, let alone how it was celebrated—and if it even existed. Much of what we imagine Roman paganism to be is late and does not pre-date Christianity, and much is 19th century fabrication. We really have no idea what the ancient Romans actually believed, since their faith is a matter of great confusion. In fact, Christianity is the only verifiable and thus knowable Roman religion! But this also does not mean that Christianity is therefore “pagan.” It simply means that Christ taught, lived, died and resurrected in the Roman empire. If we want to know what people believed back then, we have to look at Christianity. The rest is unknown.
The Jablonskis had a profound influence on Enlightenment thinkers, who popularized and spread their various “examples” of paganisms in Catholic Christianity. The very “energy” of the Enlightenment was anti-clerical and anti-Catholic, and therefore was readily adopted and promoted by Protestants. So much so, that the assumption of pagan traditions engrained deep within Christianity is even today taken as “fact,” and frequently repeated as a “given” beyond question. Of course, it is not ancient history that is being repeated, but the fantasies of the Jablonskis. Therefore, a student of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson completed Luther’s project and re-edited the New Testament, in which he literally cut out and pasted together verses, in order to “purify” Scripture (a process begun by Luther). Jefferson called his much-truncated bible, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazereth,” in which Jesus would only be a “philosopher.” Jefferson’s aim was to take out what he regarded as all supernatural and miraculous events and misinterpretations by the Four Evangelists, since he knew better. And many Americans venerate this man as their “Founding Father.”
Likewise, the scientism that emerged in the 19th century was the daughter of Protestantism, seeking purity by expunging all religious explanations of natural reality—ridding “science” of all “superstitions.”
For our discussion, we only need to mention Gerald Massey (1828—1907), who was influenced by Darwin and thus explained that “religions” also “evolve.” For him, it was all about ancient Egypt, which he suggested was the real root of Western civilization (and thus he is the “father” of Martin Bernal). Massey was the first to suggest that the life of Jesus was “stolen” by early Christians from the myth of Horus, the ancient Egyptian god. This launched another cottage industry—studying the various “resurrecting gods” in ancient “religions” (a dead end, since this is merely the Christianization of antiquity, where, irony of ironies, the ancient past is given a Christian overlay), while the “theme” of Christianity “stealing” ancient traditions is also going strong.
All this is context for the question at hand: is the Christmas tree pagan? No, it is not, and for two reasons.
First, there is no evidence whatsoever from antiquity that can be used to back up this claim; we only have the imaginings of the Jablonskis and Frazer.
Second, there is plenty of evidence to help us understand the history of the Christmas tree, which stems from German Catholic tradition, and which was brought to Britain by Prince Albert, and from there spread throughout the English-speaking countries, and now the entire world.
How did it become part of German Catholic tradition?
But first, an aside into the life of Saint Boniface, the Englishman, who converted the Germans in the 8th century. There is a lot of misinformation about what Boniface did, and this misinformation is always repeated endlessly as yet more “proof” of the Christmas tree being pagan.
We do know that the ancient Germans venerated oak trees. In his missionary work, Saint Boniface chopped down the most important of these oaks, and from its wood constructed an oratory dedicated to Saint Peter the Apostle. This is what is told in the actual, historical account, The Life of Saint Boniface, written by Willibald (sometime after 768 AD).
Enter, Henry van Dyke (1852—1933), writer and Presbyterian minister, whose novels, stories and poetry were wildly popular in his lifetime. In 1891, he wrote a short story called, “The Oak of Geismar,” in which he wound his fiction around the holy deed of Saint Boniface chopping down the oak. We should let van Dyke tell his own story (note: “Winfrid” is Boniface; van Dyke normalizes the saint’s Old English name, Wynfreth. It was Pope Gregory II who re-named him “Boniface” when he sent him as a missionary to evangelize the pagan Germans):
He grasped the broad axe from the hand of Gregor, and striding to the oak began to hew against it. Then the sole wonder in Winfrid’s life came to pass. For, as the bright blade circled above his head, and the flakes of wood flew from the deepening gash in the body of the tree, a whirling wind passed over the forest. It gripped the oak from its foundations. Backward it fell like a tower, groaning as it split asunder in four pieces. But just behind it, and unharmed by the ruin, stood a young fir-tree. pointing a green spire toward the stars.
Winfrid let the axe drop, and turned to speak to the people.
“This little tree a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree to-night. It is the wood of peace, for your houses are built of the fir. It is the sign of an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child ; gather about it, not in the wild wood, but in your own homes; there it will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.”
So they took the fir-tree from its place, and carried it in joyful procession to the edge of the glade, and laid it on one of the sledges… Alvold bade them open the doors of his great hall and set the tree in the midst of it. They kindled lights among its branches, till it seemed to be tangled full of stars. The children encircled it wondering, and the sweet smell of the balsam filled the house.
Then Winfrid stood up on the dais at the end of the hall, with the old priest sitting at his feet near by, and told the story of Bethlehem, of the babe in the manger, of the shepherds on the hillside, of the host of angels and their strange music.
Thus, fiction was grafted on to history, and then replaced it. Van Dyke is the “source” of the “fact” repeated still today—that a young tree shot up when the old oak fell over, which became the Christmas tree; and thus, a Christmas tree is a pagan hangover from the ancient Germans (also see Frazer above). The original, medieval account of Saint Boniface’s chopping mentions no “miraculous” fir tree shooting up. The historical document simply tells us that the Saint made a small chapel from the wood of the old oak tree that he had chopped down. That is all. It was van Dyke who introduced the fiction of the green fir tree miraculously appearing where the old oak once stood, and the superstitious Germans dragging it away and venerating it, as they had once venerated the oak tree. Van Dyke was imbued with the “logic” of the Jablonskis—of Catholics adopting pagan practices and objects, which he wanted to show in his story. People have transformed van Dyke’s fiction into “fact.”
But getting beyond fiction, what is the real history of the Christmas tree? It is to be found in the Bible, and in Christian theology and tradition, and nowhere else. Let us enumerate it yet again for those who have forgotten.
First, the Christmas tree is the Root of Jesse, or the Jesse Tree: the genealogy of Jesus (Isaiah 10: 10; 11: 1; Romans 15:12) . The earliest depiction of this Tree is from 1089, in the Vysehrad Codex, in which Jesse is shown as the ancestor of Mary and Jesus. This depiction became standard medieval iconography in stained glass windows, frescoes, and illuminated manuscripts. There is a huge version of it on the ceiling of the Church of Saint Michael, in Hildesheim, Germany, and which dates from around 1138.
Second, the Christmas tree is the Burning Bush Tree (Exodus 3:1-4:17), which in Christian theology is Mary, the ever-virgin Mother of God, who is the new Eve, whose children are the Christians. The old Eve’s children were delivered to death. The new Eve’s children are delivered to eternal life. The original Burning Bush is located in Egypt, in Saint Catherine’s Monastery (the Sinai Peninsula).
Third, the Christmas tree recalls an old tradition, which states that as the Holy Family was escaping to Egypt, the soldiers of Herod were drawing near. The donkey on which the Virgin sat dashed towards a tree, a juniper, which opened up its boughts and hid the Holy Family, while the danger passed. The Virgin blessed the tree. Thus, throughout the Middle Ages, boughs always adorned churches and shrines at Christmastide.
Fourth, the Christmas Tree is the Paradise Tree, or that Tree of Knowledge from which the old Eve ate condemnation for all mankind, but which the new Eve changes into salvation by way of the new Tree (the Cross), the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9), which is the promise of the Burning Bush and the Root of Jesse fulfilled.
Fifth, the Christmas tree is the Hortus Conclusus, the “Enclosed Garden” that is Mary, in whom the Root of Jesse sprouts (Luke 1:28; 42).. The most famous representation of this is The Little Garden of Paradise (Paradiesgärtlein), by the anonymous Upper-Rhenish Master, a painting that dates from about 1410—1420.
In medieval Europe, what we call Christmas Eve (December 24th) was the feast day of Saints Adam and Eve and this feast began the Christmas season, which lasted until Twelfth Night (January 5th). Before Christmas Eve was (and is) the Advent fast, a time to prepare, through fasting and prayer, for the coming of Jesus.
Thus, in the Christmas season, it was common for churches and shrines to set up paradise trees (usually just called “paradises”), on which were hung apples (which tempted the first Eve), as well as representations of the Eucharist (which saves mankind). The old tree which led to the Fall is become the Tree of Life which saves. Thus, Paradise regained. As well, these paradises would have roses entwined in the boughs, for the Blessed Virgin, that is, her Holy Rosary. This is also the origin of the traditional red and green colors associated with Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, it was common for churches and shrines to present mystery plays, and one of the ones to have survived is known as The Paradise Play, a copy of which exists from the 16th century, although there are references to such a play from the late 12th century. The play showed the Fall of mankind, from the creation of Adam and Eve, to their expulsion from Paradise. The main prop in this play was the Paradise Tree. The tradition of setting up the Paradise Tree continued in Germany, while it was rooted out in other Protestant jurisdictions (see 1644 above), where such plays were once enacted. The countries that remained Catholic in Europe did not have strong mystery play traditions (such plays were especially popular in pre-Reformation England and Germany).
In other words, it is impossible to demonstrate anything “pagan” about the Christmas tree, while it is rather straightforward to trace it through Christian history and tradition.
Thus, it can be said that the persistent attacks on the Christmas tree are simply the legacy of Protestant eugenics—the cancel culture: by canceling the Christmas tree “we” will go back to the “truth,” to the “real” and “authentic” Christianity. You see, Wokeism is nothing new.
The only thing cancel culture can leave behind is destruction, because the world is emptied of anything that might remind us of the holy (the very definition of secularism). And then these same types of Protestants complain that no one wishes them a “Merry Christmas,” and they detest the phrase “Happy Holidays.” Funny, isn’t it?
Featured: The Jesse Tree, Holkham Bible, ca. 1320-1330.
