The Christmas Tree
Its Pre-Christian Origin
In Many Parts of the world, the evergreen Christmas tree
is a well-know symbol in holiday celebrations and commerce. The religious
origin of the tree runs deep and stretches far back in human history.
This
is evident in Bohuslan Province on
the west coast of Sweden and 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. Archaeologist say that
many of these rock carvings were made between about 1,800 and 500 B.C.E . 1
Rock Carvings suggest
that pagan worship of the evergreen tree began before the time of Christ.
These remarkable carvings reveal something
about the beliefs of people who lived a very long time before the birth of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth. For Example, some researchers think that in early
times in area of present-day Sweden and Norway, evergreen trees, such as
spruces, were used as sacred symbols.
Why was it that people living in these
far northern coastal areas of the world made rock carvings of spruce trees?
Some scholars suggest it was partly because of the evident rarity of those trees
during the Pre-Christian times when the carvings were made. Understandably, a
tree that stays permanently green, or alive”, when other trees seemingly die in
cold weather must have been somewhat of a mystery.
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 spruce were carved into rocks in the of Bohuslan and Ostfold many
centuries before that tree became a common sight there.
The book Rock Carvings in the Borderlands, published in cooperation with the
Swedish Natioal 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 farming and animal
husbandry. They largely worshipped the same gods, although the names of the
gods varied”
The Rock Carving Tours, a booklet
published by the Bohuslans Museum, further
explain: “It was not the everyday world the rock carvers wanted to portray. We
believe that their images perhaps were a form of prayers in vocation to the
gods.” 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 introduce into
northern Europe, National encyclopedia, the Swedish national reference
encyclopedia, notes: “The marked presence of sexually charged depictions shows
how important a fertility cult was in the religion of the Bronze Age people in
the North”.
Evidently, custom involving evergreen
trees spread and became part of life in many places. The Encyclopedia 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 holiday,”
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 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.
* Some of the Bohuslan rock-carving sites are included in the
UNESCO World Heritage List.
