Oh, [pagan] Christmas Tree?

I love Christmas trees.  Since I was born, they were a part of my traditional Christmas.  The twinkling lights, both on indoor and outdoor trees, brought such a festive glowing touch to the season – almost as if an inanimate object can “rejoice”

There was a season when that joy and love were destroyed because I was taught that all of Christmas was pagan, including the tradition of Christmas trees, and therefore displeasing to the Lord.   I was so angry and grieved at myself and Christianity for promoting such “godlessness”, that in a rage, I trashed everything I owned having to do with Christmas.  I busted the ornaments, and stomped on the lights breaking them with glee, as if I was exorcizing some demon that had infested my life.  It brings tears to my eyes these days in remembrance of all the things that I had once incorporated as part of what I believed to be the truth > the celebration of the birth of Christ, and mocked them with my new found “truth”.

When I discovered the truth about what I so errantly believed about Christmas due to my new found “faith” in keeping Torah, it left me in a very difficult place emotionally.  Would I ever find joy in the Holiday again?  Or was I condemned to a time, season after season, in a struggle to find peace with it all?  I certainly could not deny that the Christmas season brought joy, because it also brought sorrow at the same time.  I think of all the things that I have had the hardest time adjusting to after coming out of Messianic Hebrew Roots, is Christmas and Easter.  All I wanted was balance and it took years and years to arrive there, till finally I am at peace with most of it.

My personal struggles not withstanding, the Christmas tree is the main target of HR, and other Christians, who seek to deny that Christ is the “Reason for the Season” and force paganism as the object of worship rather than Jesus Christ.  The text used to “prove” that God is “against” the Christmas tree is Jeremiah 10.  Although this passage was spoken by the prophet to Israel because she chased after and then made idols out of trees somehow got twisted as pointing to the tradition we observe today.

If one looks at Jeremiah 10 closely, the text itself shows clearly that the admonition was not against the trees, but the gods that were formed out of them and then adorned with gold and silver, fastened at the bottom and stood up to be *worshiped as if they were gods*.  It was not the tree that was stood up and worshiped, it were the gods *carved from the trees*! This was the sin of Israel.  It had nothing to do with decorated, trimmed and lighted Christmas trees.  Christians do not bow down and worship a tree.  They worship Jesus Christ.

Jer 10:3  For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

Jer 10:4   They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

Jer 10:5   They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good. 

Jer 10:9  Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder: blue and purple is their clothing: they are all the work of cunning men. 

Jer 10:10   But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation.

Jer 10:11 ¶ Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens. 

Jer 10:12 ¶ He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.

Jer 10:13   When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures.

Jer 10:14   Every man is brutish in his knowledge: every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them. 

Jer 10:15   They are vanity, and the work of errors: in the time of their visitation they shall perish. 

 

The Christmas tree did not originate in paganism.  It originated in Livonia in the 15^th century when a group of men decorated a pine tree as part of the Christmas celebration to promote the birth of Christ because paganism was trying to oust the Gospel!!!

Trees, plants and greenery have been used by all cultures and religions since the Garden of Eden, including God-instructed commandments.  Even Jesus was worshiped with swaying palm branches laid down before Him in honor.  The Feast of Sukkot or Tabernacles also uses palm branches and fruit as part of the celebration, per God.  What a surprise to discover that long before God gave the command to use tree branches in worship to Him, Egypt was using them for her own worship and celebration!!!!  So do we now say that God resorted to paganism because He incorporated a “pagan practice” into Israel’s covenant???

“Jesus is the reason for the season”, no matter that paganism and secularism has taken hold of it for their own, for their own purposes.  Christians who have Christmas Trees are honoring Christ with a tradition born out of love for Him, and to share the Gospel at a time of year when God makes so many hearts open to hear the message of Jesus’ birth.

 

 

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