Christmas Tree

Christmas tree is well-known to be the symbol in holiday celebrations and commerce. Human history coils around the religious significant of the tree.

                “This is evident in Bohuslan province on the west coast of Sweden an in the nearby province of ostfold in Norway. In those areas, more than 75,000 individual rock carvings have been found at some 5,000 different sites”.    -Awake! December 2011

These rock carvings were made between about 1,800 and 500 B.C.E as recorded by archaeologists. These rock carvings clearly revealed that pagan worship of evergreen tree began before the birth of Jesus Christ.

 Awake magazine, December 2011, recorded that most researchers think that in early times in areas of present Sweden and Norway, evergreen trees, such as spruce, were used as sacred symbols. Some scholars strongly suggest it was partly because of the evident rarity of those trees during the pre- Christian times when the carvings were made.

 

Knowing well, that trees have been symbols of life, survival, and immortality in many cultures worldwide. This fact may also help explain why tree images that clearly resemble evergreen spruces were carved into rocks in the area of Bohuslan and Ostfold many centuries before that tree became a common sight here.

The book rock carvings in the borderlands published in cooperation with the Swedish National Heritage Board, says: “the images of trees in rock carvings illustrate that as early as the Bronze Age the southern Scandinavian region was part of a larger religious and cultural context that covered the whole of Europe and large parts of Asia. Religion and cosmology were adapted to people whose livelihoods were farming and animal husbandry. They largely worshipped the same gods, although the names of gods varied.”

The rock carvings tour, a booklet published by the Bohuslans Museum, further explains:

 “It was not the everyday world the rock carvers wanted to portray. We believe that their images perhaps were a form of prayer and vocation to the god.” The booklet adds: “beliefs revolved around the eternal circle of life, fertility, death, and re-birth.”

Describing a unique collection of symbolic art, created long before the art of writing was introduced into northern Europe, nationalencyklopedin, the Swedish national reference encyclopaedia, notes: “the marked presence of sexually charged depictions shows how important a fertility cult was in the religion of Bronze Age people in the north.

Evidently, customs involving evergreen trees spread and became part of life in many places. The encyclopaedia Britannica states regarding the Christmas tree:

“Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity.”

It did so in various rites and customs, Including

“The custom…of placing a yule tree at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays.”

            The broad way leading the evergreen tree to modern popularity was paved in 1841 when the British royal family used a decorated spruce for their Christmas celebrations. Today the Christmas tree is recognized all over the world, and the demand for countless millions of natural and artificial Christmas trees seems endless. Meanwhile, Scandinavian rock carvings provide silent testimony, literally set in stone that the Christmas tree is not of Christian origin.