[Whether the Christmas tree arises out of pagan worship or the
nature-based polytheism of Egyptian lore, the Christmas tree plays a
special part in our lives today, demonstrating that our relationship
with nature goes back millennia. ]
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SACRED TREE OR TREE OF PARADISE? NATURE AND THE CHRISTMAS TREE  
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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin
December 25, 2023
CounterPunch
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_ Whether the Christmas tree arises out of pagan worship or the
nature-based polytheism of Egyptian lore, the Christmas tree plays a
special part in our lives today, demonstrating that our relationship
with nature goes back millennia. _

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The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews used evergreen wreaths,
garlands, and trees to symbolise their respect for nature and their
belief in eternal life. The pagan Europeans worshipped trees and had
the custom of decorating their houses and barns with evergreens, or
erecting a Yule tree during midwinter holidays. However, the modern
Christmas tree can be shown to have roots in Christian
[[link removed]] traditions too.

The term ‘pagan’ originated in a contemptuous, disdainful, and
disparaging attitude towards people who had a respect for nature,
the source [[link removed]] of their
sustenance: “Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus “rural”,
“rustic”, later “civilian”) is a term first used in the fourth
century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who
practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. Paganism
has broadly connoted the “religion of the peasantry”.”

As people gradually converted to Christianity, December 25 became the
date for celebrating
[[link removed]] Christmas.
Christianity’s “most significant holidays were Epiphany on January
6, which commemorated the arrival of the Magi after Jesus’ birth,
and Easter, which celebrated Jesus’ resurrection.” For the first
three centuries of Christianity’s existence, “Jesus Christ’s
birth wasn’t celebrated at all” and “the first official mention
of December 25 as a holiday honouring Jesus’ birthday appears in an
early Roman calendar from AD 336.” It is also believed that December
25 became the date for Christ’s birth “to coincide with existing
pagan festivals honouring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and
Mithra (the Persian god of light). That way, it became easier to
convince Rome’s pagan subjects to accept Christianity as the
empire’s official religion.”

During the Middle Ages, the church used mystery plays to dramatize
biblical stories for largely illiterate people to illustrate the
stories of the Bible “from creation to damnation to redemption”.
[1] Thus, we find evidence of a connection between the Christmas tree
and the Tree of Life in the Paradise plays as well as pagan sacred
trees.

In western Germany, the story of Adam and Eve was acted out using a
prop of a paradise tree, a fir tree decorated with apples to represent
the Garden [[link removed]] of
Eden:

“The Germans set up a paradise tree in their homes on December 24,
the religious feast day of Adam and Eve. They hung wafers on it
(symbolizing the eucharistic host, the Christian sign of redemption);
in a later tradition the wafers were replaced by cookies of various
shapes. Candles, symbolic of Christ as the light of the world, were
often added. In the same room was the “Christmas pyramid,” a
triangular construction of wood that had shelves to hold Christmas
figurines and was decorated with evergreens, candles, and a star. By
the 16th century the Christmas pyramid and the paradise tree had
merged, becoming the Christmas tree.”

Full-page miniature
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Adam, Eve and the Serpent, [f. 7r] (1445) (The New York Public Library
Digital Collections)

The story of Adam and Eve begins with their disobedience, but the play
cycle ends with the promise of the coming Saviour. The
medieval Church
[[link removed]] “declared
December 24 the feast day of Adam and Eve. Around the Twelfth Century,
this date became the traditional one for the performance of the
paradise play.”

Over time the tree of paradise began to transcend the religious
context of the miracle plays and moved towards a role in the Christmas
celebrations of the guilds. [2]

For example [[link removed]]:

“The first evidence of decorated trees associated with Christmas Day
are trees in guildhalls decorated with sweets to be enjoyed by the
apprentices and children. In Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia),
in 1441, 1442, 1510, and 1514, the Brotherhood of Blackheads erected a
tree for the holidays in their guild houses in Reval (now Tallinn) and
Riga.”

“Possibly the earliest existing picture of a Christmas tree being
paraded through the  streets with a bishop figure to represent St
Nicholas, 1521 (Germanisches National Museum)”. See: _The Medieval
Christmas_ by Sophie Jackson (2005) p68)

Early records show
[[link removed]] “that fir trees
decorated with apples were first known in Strasbourg in 1605. The
first use of candles on such trees is recorded by a Silesian duchess
in 1611.”  Furthermore, the earliest
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representation of a Christmas tree is 1576, seen on a keystone
sculpture of a private home in Turckheim, Alsace (then part of the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, today France).

Keystone sculpture at Turckheim, Alsace (MPK).

The paradise tree represented two important trees of the Garden of
Eden: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.
It is likely
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“because most other trees were barren and lifeless during December,
the actors chose to hang the apples from an evergreen tree rather than
from an apple tree.”

THE MYSTERY PLAYS OF OBERUFER

A good example of this old tradition is the mystery plays of Oberufer.
The Austrian linguist and literary critic
[[link removed]] Karl Julius
Schröer (1825-1900) “discovered a Medieval cycle of Danube Swabian
mystery plays in Oberufer, a village since engulfed by the
Bratislava’s borough of Főrév (German: Rosenheim, today’s
Ružinov). Schröer collected manuscripts, made meticulous textual
comparisons, and published his findings in the book Deutsche
Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn (“The German Nativity Plays of
Hungary”) in 1857/1858.”

The plates
[[link removed]] giving
an impression of costume designs, based
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Rudolf Steiner’s (who studied under Karl Julius Schröer
(1825-1900)) directions, were painted by the Editor’s father, Eugen
Witta, who saw the plays produced by Rudolf Steiner many times while
working as a young architect on the first Goetheanum.

Before the actual performance, the whole theatrical company went in
procession through the village. They were headed
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the ‘Tree-singer’, who carried in his hand the small ‘Paradise
Tree’—a kind of symbol of the Tree of Life. The story of the tree
and its fruit is mentioned in the text
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the play:

But see, but see a tree stands here
Which precious fruit doth bear,
That God has made his firm decree
It shall not eaten be.
Yea, rind and flesh and stone
They shall leave well alone.
This tree is very life,
Therefore God will not have
That man shall eat thereof.

Actors portraying Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise (Eve: Ye
must delve and I shall spin – our bodily sustenance for to win.)
Performed by the Players of St Peter in the Church of St Clement
Eastcheap, London, England in 2004 November.

THE PARADISE TREE: EGYPTIAN ORIGINS?

Gary Greenberg has compared many stories of the bible with earlier
Egyptian myths to try and understand where the ideas contained in the
Old Testament originated. He explains:

“In the Garden of Eden God planted two trees, the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil, and The Tree of Life. Eating from the former gave
one moral knowledge; eating from the latter conferred eternal life. He
also placed man in that garden to tend to the plants but told him he
may not eat from the Tree of Knowledge (and therefore become morally
knowledgeable). About eating from the Tree of Life, God said nothing:
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die” (Gen 2:17). […] Adam and Eve did not die when they ate from
the tree. Indeed, God feared that they would next eat from The Tree of
Life and gain immortality.” [3]

Greenberg notes the similarity of these ideas with Egyptian texts and
traditions, specifically the writings from Egyptian Coffin Text 80
concerning Shu and Tefnut:

“The most significant portions of Egyptian Coffin Text 80 concern
the children of Atum, the Heliopolitan Creator. Atum’s two children
are Shu and Tefnut, and in this text Shu is identified as the
principle of life and Tefnut is identified as the principle of moral
order, a concept that the Egyptians refer to as Ma’at. These are the
two principles associated with the two special trees in the Garden of
Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not
only does the Egyptian text identify these same two principles as
offspring of the Creator deity, the text goes on to say that Atum
(whom the biblical editors had confused with Adam) is instructed to
eat of his daughter, who signifies the principle of moral order. “It
is of your daughter Order that you shall eat. (Coffin Text 80, line
63). This presents us with a strange correlation. Both Egyptian myth
and Genesis tell us that the chief deity created two fundamental
principles, Life and Moral Order. In the Egyptian myth, Atum is told
to eat of moral order but in Genesis, Adam is forbidden to eat of
moral order.” [4]

In another description
[[link removed](Collom)/04%3A_Ancient_Egypt/4.04%3A_Ancient_Egyptian_Religion] we
can see the similarities between the Egyptian and biblical stories:

“Atum-Ra looked upon the nothingness and recognized his aloneness,
and so he mated with his own shadow to give birth to two children, Shu
(god of air, whom Atum-Ra spat out) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture,
whom Atum-Ra vomited out). Shu gave to the early world the principles
of life while Tefnut contributed the principles of order. Leaving
their father on the ben-ben [the mound that arose from the primordial
waters Nu upon which the creator deity Atum settled], they set out to
establish the world. In time, Atum-Ra became concerned because his
children were gone so long, and so he removed his eye and sent it in
search of them. While his eye was gone, Atum-Ra sat alone on the hill
in the midst of chaos and contemplated eternity. Shu and Tefnut
returned with the eye of Atum-Ra (later associated with the Udjat eye,
the Eye of Ra, or the All-Seeing Eye) and their father, grateful for
their safe return, shed tears of joy. These tears, dropping onto the
dark, fertile earth of the ben-ben, gave birth to men and women.”

However, Greenberg points out the differences between the two stories:

“Despite the close parallels between the two descriptions there is
one glaring conflict. In the Egyptian text Nun (the personification of
the Great Flood) urged Atum the Heliopolitan Creator to eat of his
daughter Tefnut, giving him access to knowledge of moral order. In
Genesis, God forbade Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil, denying him access moral knowledge.” [5]

Why was Adam denied access to moral knowledge? Greenberg writes:

“God feared that he would obtain eternal life if he ate from the
Tree of Life and it became necessary to expel him from the Garden.
[…] The Egyptians believed that if you lived a life of moral order,
the god Osiris, who ruled over the afterlife, would award you eternal
life. That was the philosophical link between these two fundamental
principles of Life and Moral Order, and that is why Egyptians depicted
them as the children of the Creator. In effect, knowledge of moral
behaviour was a step towards immortality and godhead. That is
precisely the issue framed in Genesis. When Adam ate from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, God declared that if Adam also ate from
the Tree of Life he would become like God himself. But Hebrews were
monotheists. The idea that humans could become god-like flew in the
face of the basic theological concept of biblical religion, that there
was and could be only one god. Humans can’t become god-like.” [6]

Adam and Eve and the Serpent—Expulsion from Paradise, ca. 1480-1500
(Anonymous)

Greenberg then describes the fundamental differences between Hebrew
monotheism and Egyptian polytheism:

“The Hebrew story is actually a sophisticated attack on the Egyptian
doctrine of moral order leading to eternal life. It begins by
transforming Life and Moral Order from deities into trees, eliminating
the cannibalistic imagery suggested by Atum eating of his daughter.
Then, Adam was specifically forbidden to eat the fruit of Moral Order.
Next, Adam was told that not only wouldn’t he achieve eternal life
if he ate of Moral Order but that he would actually die if he did eat
it. Finally, Adam was expelled from the Garden before he could eat
from the Tree of Life and live for eternity. […]  When God told
Adam that he would surely die the very day he ate from the Tree of
Knowledge, the threat should be understood to mean that humans should
not try to become like a deity. God didn’t mean that Adam would
literally drop dead the day he ate the forbidden fruit; he meant that
the day Adam violated the commandment he would lose access to eternal
life. […] Once he violated the commandment, he lost access to the
Tree of Life and could no longer eat the fruit that prevented
death.” [7]

The difference between the lord/slave relationship of monotheism and
the nature-based ideology of polytheistic paganism is that the subject
is denied an eternal place with the master in the former but is
welcomed as an equal in the latter. This is because the subject is an
integral part of nature in paganism:

“In the shamanic world, not only every tree, but every _being_ was
and is holy – because they are all imbued with the wonderful power
of life, the great mystery of universal Being. “Yes, we believe
that, even below heaven, the forests have their gods also, the sylvan
creatures and fauns and different kinds of goddesses” (Pliny the
Elder II, 3). [8]

It is also important to note “that the “serpent in the tree”
motif associated with the Adam and Eve story comes directly from
Egyptian art. The Egyptians believed that Re, the sun God that circled
the earth every day, had a nightly fight with the serpent Aphophis and
each night defeated him. Several Egyptian paintings show a scene in
which Re, appearing in the form of “Mau, the Great Cat of
Heliopolis,” sits before a tree while the serpent Apophis coils
about the tree, paralleling the image of rivalry between Adam and the
serpent in the tree of the Garden of Eden.” [9]

The sun god Ra, in the form of Great Cat, slays the snake Apophis.
Image:  Eisnel – Public Domain.

Thus, we have moved from the biblical story of Adam and Eve back to
the earlier paganism (the connection with Nature) of the Egyptians.
While there is much evidence that one of the sources of the origin of
the Christmas tree is in the ancient pagan worship of trees and
evergreen boughs, there is also a lot of evidence that another source
of the Christmas tree is in the medieval mystery plays where the
Paradise tree was a necessary prop for the biblical story of Adam and
Eve. If we look back even further to Egyptian mythology, we can see
parallels between the biblical stories of creation and the Egyptian
myths that also illustrate fundamental philosophical and spiritual
differences between monotheist and polytheist ideology, i.e. the
differences between the ‘enslaved’ (with their Lord/Master who can
reward or punish) and the people who work with and respect the cycles
of nature (persons outside the bounds of the Christian community,
ethnic religions, Indigenous peoples, etc.).

Indeed, Tuck and Yang (2012:6) propose a criterion (for the
term Indigenous [[link removed]])
based on accounts of origin: “Indigenous peoples are those who have
creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to
be in a particular place – indeed how we/they came to be a place.
Our/their relationships to land comprise our/their epistemologies,
ontologies, and cosmologies”.

By the 1970s, the term Indigenous
[[link removed]] was used as a way
of “linking the experiences, issues, and struggles of groups of
colonized people across international borders”, thus politicizing
their resistance to the dominant colonizing narratives that
historically spread while using Christianity as a form of social
control on a global scale.

Thus, whether the Christmas tree arises out of the pagan worship of
trees or the nature-based polytheism of Egyptian lore about Life and
Knowledge (as the Paradise Tree), the Christmas tree still plays an
important and special part in our lives today, demonstrating that our
relationship with nature goes back millennia. We can choose to be
exiled from nature or become involved in the cycles of nature in ways
that end our current destructive practices.

NOTES

[1] Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner (2012) p15
[2] Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner (2012) p16
[3] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p48
[4] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p49
[5] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51
[6] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51/52
[7] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51/52
[8] Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins
of Yuletide by Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller- Ebeling (2003) p24
[9] 101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p49/50

_CAOIMHGHIN Ó CROIDHEÁIN is an Irish artist who has exhibited
widely around Ireland. His work [[link removed]] consists of
paintings based on cityscapes of Dublin, Irish history and
geopolitical themes.  His blog of critical writing based on cinema,
art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and
Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by
country at [link removed]

_CounterPunch is reader supported! Please help keep us alive
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New articles, from an independent left-leaning perspective, are posted
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* Christmas
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* ancient civilizations
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* Egypt
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* Nature
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* Indigenous peoples
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