Origins of the Christmas Tree

My family has always dressed the Yule tree with fruit, nuts, cookies, and lard balls encrusted with seeds. Candles are lit on Solstice night on the branches. The tree is taken outside the next day, and left for the birds and animals to eat from. My Grandmother said that was why the Victorian ornaments were made in the shapes of fruit. Thanks for your hard work and finding great images. You have a new subscriber, and I wish you a Good Yule.🖤🇨🇦

I used to work at a Pennsylvania Dutch history museum. They had the first use of Christmas trees in the new world. The trees were hung upside down from the rafters. Cookies were hung on the trees to keep them away from mice. I think this is an old German tradition that had nothing to do with religion, people and animals were stuck indoors together because of weather, trees smell good and smell flows downward.

Probably the saddest part about Christmas in the Philippines is that, despite being a HUMONGOUS deal, real/organic trees are exceedingly rare. I don't think I've ever even personally seen one. I've always found the whole "getting a tree" thing in cartoons and sitcoms funny, because tradition here is just taking the plastic tree out of its box.

Serbians bring a small oak inside at Christmas. Small oaks still have their dead leaves held. It’s an interesting remaining tradition

In the alpine reagion in central Europe, e.g. in Styria (part of Austria) it was also quite common in rural peasant homes to hang the christmastree over the table of the main room, or hang it the corner corner of a room which was decorated with a crucifix and other devotional objects. Sometimes these trees would hang upside down, sometimes they would hang right side up. This was probably done because of praticality reasons, to save space in small rooms where people needed the space to also live an work in it. But they still didn't want to go without the holy tree. Some tradional restaurants in this region still decorate their dining room with a hanging chrismastree give it more an older drational flair. And even the citiy center of Graz (the captial of Styria) is decorated at Christmas time with up side down hanging trees, to celebrate this lokal tradition. I think this tradition of small hanging trees in small rural homes could be the missing link between general decoration of homes with green and evergreen branches and fully established chrismas trees like we know them today. I would suggest that Europen people decorated their homes for thousends of years with greenery at this holy time of the year. In Germany this tradion survived the Christianisation. And whoever could eford it would use a hole tree instead of single branches, and other might go a middle way and gang small trees in there homes, and more rich people (like order of the knights mentioned in this video) would have a hall, big enough to put a full big tree in it.

Hello Kevin. I just discovered your channel - watching your documentary on Hermes. I'll have to watch it again. There is so much to understand about Greek mythology.

I was raised in a Lutheran family in the USA with German heritage that Martin Luther first introduced it to his family. Nice to learn about other origin stories.

Thank you for the video. I learned more than I knew about historical and cultural traditions of the origin of the Christmas tree. I agree the practice has more ancient origins that were combined and adapted to the holiday as the celebration changed over the centuries. Enjoy the holidays to you and yours. Look forward to your next posting.

Very well presented! Thank you! ❤

There I was, happened to be watching the clock teach the 18:33. On the dot, upload notification. Nice one! Always interested in your efforts. I have also had a cold. Just getting better, sláinte.

💚🏜 love these solid historical informative shows 🎄

The following is my reply to a YouTube video titled "The Truth About Christmas - The Start of the Tribulation." The video was posted on YouTube on Sunday December 11, 2022. Here's my reply: The Canaanites were celebrating the winter solstice ritual in honor of Baal 5000 years ago. In each household they had a tree (phallus symbol), a wreath (vagina symbol), and they exchanged gifts. Many centuries later the ancient Romans were celebrating the ritual in honor of Saturn and doing it the same way (tree, wreaths, gifts). Their name for the ritual was 'Saturnalia.' In around 300 A.D. the Catholic Church priestclass renamed the ritual 'Christmas.' They did it as an evangelistic ploy to attract people away from Saturn worship. The majority of the Roman people were Saturn worshipers. The temple of Saturn was the biggest building in ancient Rome. The temple priests were very wealthy and the Catholic priestclass wanted to get in on the cash cow. The spirit behind Christmas is Saturn (Old Testament Baal). The Apostle John called him 'The Spirit of Antichrist" (counterfeit Christ who seeks to mimic the Holy Spirit). He is the principality of idolatry, plus he is the spirit of top-down-control (seeks to manifest through men-at-the-top, e.g. leaders of nations, governments, religions, corporations, military, academia, medicine, media, finance, etc.). The ancient Babylonians and Assyrians called him Bel. The ancient Greeks called him Cronos. The ancient Hindus called him Indra. Same spirit going by different names in different cultures and in different time periods. It was very important to him to implement the winter solstice ritual as he understood that when a person celebrates (honors) the ritual it gives him automatic rights of access to their human spirit (conscience, intuition, and the ability to commune with the Holy Spirit) and to have ongoing influence on their spiritual life (the kingdom of darkness is all about control). Jesus was born on September 11, 3 B.C. by the Julian Calendar. Bethlehem is 2500 ft. above sea level so that in December there would've been no grass for the sheep to eat (see Luke 2:8-20 in the King James Version). Jesus had nothing to do with Christmas (never did and never will). You can verify this information online, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find information that goes against the system narrative (propaganda/brainwash).

The hungarians call Christmas "Karácsony". This comes from very old times, long before Christ. At the shortest/darkest day, the hungarians took out falcons and flew them up to the sky to bring down light to Earth. This type of falcons called "kerecsen" in hungarian language. These falcons was taken out on a special multi-branched tree. That's why it is called Karácsony and this is where the Christmass Tree "Karácsony fa" came from in Hungary. Later on the tree was decorated by germans really.

Thank you and Merry Christmas, God bless and have a wonderful new year.

Wonderful video! 🎄🎄🎄Merry Christmas!

Second video of yours i watched. I subed after the first. Love your work in those two, going ahead for the rest. Thanks for your work and hello from switzerland

My grandfather died on Christmas Eve and I sang o Christmas tree in German for him when I was a child just before he died.

While it’s possible that the Christmas tree has a very ancient pagan origin, I think you overlook the theory of it coming from medieval Christian mystery plays, one of the most popular around Christmas showing the story of Adam and Eve. There are old depictions of a tree bearing both red apples (for the fruit of knowledge of good and evil) and communion wafer (for the fruit of life). Also note that in Germany, sweet unconsacrated wafers (otherwise similar to communion wafers) are a traditional treat for children. So in my opinion it’s a very likely origin for the actual Christmas tree. Of course it only became so popular because people and especially Germans have an ancient pagan reverence for trees, but as you say there is absolutely no trace or mention of the Christmas tree itself in Ancient times.

I’m so ready to make this my thanksgiving dinner discussion with the family

Your videos are amazing. Love it.