It's somewhat similar here, just get it at home Depot or a Christmas tree lot. When we were younger there was a spot and I'ma sure there are probably a few left, where you could go cut it down yourself

Same in Australia

It is the same where my husband comes from Where I live ppl have tree farms and we go every year and cut a tree fresh from the farm. When I was a child my dad would take us into the woods to choose a wild tree. There is something very special about a live tree. And the children adore going out to select a tree from the farm. Its like a little forest full of nearly perfect trees

@@LE64SAM-IAM that Doug fir smell

My german mother insisted to get a real christmas tree while we were living in Rome, and hoped to nurtured it through the hot and dry roman sommer. She never managed...

Sounds wonderful.

I don't do this but I sure like the thought of it.

What a beautiful tradition. I wonder if it had to do with fruit on "paradise trees" that were popular in Germany in medieval times? Or more likely lots of cultural input from many places to make the current tradition.

@@m_d1905 I think it was a kind of sympathetic magic…showing the other trees what is wanted of them at the darkest point of the year, and luring the Sun back. It also is a sacrifice of food at the leanest time of the year.🖤🇨🇦

Probably keeps it greener longer and more fresh since the water isn't being pulled out by gravity

@João Dani lol

Thank you for sharing this!Did you say they hung the crucifix upside down? Noo that can’t be correct?! Haha

THE REASON WHY THESE WERE HUNG OFF THE FLOOR AND UP HIGH WAS ALSO TO KEEP MICE FROM CRAWLING UP THEM AND EATING THE COOKIES OR CANDY HUNG ON THEM.

It not christian it e evil read the bible

@@tobiasgriffin Obviously your reading comprehension is off. Even the bible states the tradition is harmless, just not useful.

For pagan celebrations, sure. But for the Christian holiday, it comes from the Paradise plays to commemorate the feast day of Adam and Eve in the Middle Ages on Dec 24th. The red balls represent the fruit and the popularity to bring them into homes came from German Catholics. It later spread around the world.

Christmas before Christ??? How does this even make sense ?

It makes sense, because I'm many languages name for Christmas has nothing to do with Christ. For example late Slavic and Hungarian, Bulgarian or Romanian word for holidays in that time is Kračun or some derivation of that word. (Karácsony, Craciun...) It was holiday of the shortest day and longest night. It was holiday when people celebrated new year - new beginning of the cycle. From that point days are becoming longer. The sun is shining more and shortly nature will wake up. There was also tradition of decorating outside trees with bands and ribbons.

'Obvious Scottish animist pratices' - such as?

THIS!!!! And after I continued to feel convicted when I celebrated, Father had me look into it. 😮 Yikes! The idolatry is something else. He asked us not to learn the ways of the nations and worship Him in those ways. He also asked us not to cut a tree down, stand it up in our homes then decorate it in silver and gold. Boy, if that ain't a christmas tree then idk what is. Just because people took pagan rituals and threw a Jesus sticker on it, doesn't make it a Christian thing to do. My home has been celebrating His set apart Holy feasts for a few years now and it's been a beautiful journey with Him. ❤

Wrong interpretation of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 10 is about CARVED IDOLS.

Floral arrangements in E Asia, or Hawaaian leis are pre-- or non-- Christian.

The entire world is founded on paganism. Christianity in Europe is mostly pagan, especially the orthodox church

Nope. It's a pagan tradition for yule, which is a pagan holiday.

​@@gwiz6278 Nope, earliest verifiable reference to a Christmas tree is from 1520's Germany. Nothing to do with Yule.

The verses you mentioned predates Christianity by many hundreds of years. It's specific to making idols of wood/trees and adorning them with gold and silver. Not specific to a Christmas tree.

@m_d1905 And I have a tree with silver and gold balls right now. To be honest I just use Christmas as an excuse to decorate my trees 🤫 From the view of the writers it may look like some pagan practice but who knows. People probably just like decoration. Is Barbie doll an idol? Someone today may write "people worship Barbie. They talk to it as if it's real person. They dress it and admire it's beauty." 🤣🤣🤣 Thousand years from now all people are going to know is what's written. People worshiped Barbie dolls. 🤣🤣🤣

He mentioned that, it was the lady who wrote the account of the saint who was a bit confused on the point.

Last to convert/defect to Christianity in Europe were 3 Baltic crusade targets/ victims. last of those were Lithuanians in 1300s.

That would be great. I havnt found much information on it

See, for example, the book Psychedelic Santa.

Nobody takes 'The Golden Bough' seriously any more.

@@YorkyOne true scholars do!

You mean butchering

Latvians and Estonians are German?

@@totallydead5908 I know that's what I said the Germanic tribes migrated to the Baltics. Also to Scandinavia that's how Vikings came to be & same how they traveled to Britain & became Anglo-Saxons

@@-RONNIE no the Germans lived in the Baltics since the Livonian order

@@totallydead5908 I know and I completely agree with you but they all came from and migrated from Germanic tribes that's all I'm saying. It's very nice to have people with some form of intelligence thank you for the conversation. I celebrate Geimhreadh but I hope you and your family have a good holiday 🥃 Sláinte

Pine cone shape is a symbolic reference also for pineal gland.

Martin Luther addressed the issue of the decorated tree, as many called it a pagan symbol, therefore the tradition of what we now call a Christmas tree, was commonly practiced. PS: It could very well be the case however, that the reason we still have a Christmas tree, is because of his acceptance of it, and why it was heavily promoted by Germanic peoples.

All evergreens have medicinal uses but they didn't have essential oils back then lol. You can thank science for those.

Written down when, excavated scrolls found where, held in what museum or archive?

Researchers say that Martin Luther introduced in door tree + candles, not tree in itself, which was much more ancient.

Circa 1990s - Seinfeld. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Wonder how many people really worship their Christmas tree though. Some people just put it up for fun & beauty? 🤷🏼‍♀️

no

CHAP. XII.-FURTHER ANSWERS TO THE PLEA, HOW AM I TO LIVE? If you wish to be the Lord’s disciple, it is necessary you “take your cross, and follow the Lord:” your cross; that is, your own straits and tortures, or your body only, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind, for God’s sake. Do you hesitate about arts, and trades, and about professions likewise, for the sake of children and parents? Even there was it demonstrated to us, that both “dear pledges,” and handicrafts, and trades, are to be quite left behind for the Lord’s sake; while James and John, called by the Lord, do leave quite behind both father and ship; while Matthew is roused up from the toll-booth; while even burying a father was too tardy a business for faith. None of them whom the Lord chose to Him said, “I have no means to live.” Faith fears not famine. It knows, likewise, that hunger is no less to be contemned by it for God’s sake, than every kind of death. It has learnt not to respect life; how much more food? [You ask] “How many have fulfilled these conditions?” But what with men is difficult, with God is easy. Let us, however, comfort ourselves about the gentleness and clemency of God in such wise, as not to indulge our “necessities” up to the point of affinities with idolatry, but to avoid even from afar every breath of it, as of a pestilence. [And this] not merely in the cases forementioned, but in the **universal series of human superstition** ; whether appropriated to its gods, or to the defunct, or to kings, as pertaining to the selfsame unclean spirits, sometimes through sacrifices and priesthoods, sometimes through **spectacles** and the like, sometimes through **holy-days** . CHAP. XIII.-OF THE OBSERVANCE OF DAYS CONNECTED WITH IDOLATRY In this place must be handled the subject of **holidays and other extraordinary solemnities** , which we accord sometimes to our wantonness, sometimes to our timidity, in opposition to the common faith and Discipline. The first point, indeed, on which I shall join issue is this: whether a servant of God ought to share with the very nations themselves in matters of his kind, either in dress, or in food, or in any other kind of their gladness. “To rejoice with the rejoicing, and grieve with the grieving,” is said about brethren by the apostle when exhorting to unanimity. But, for these purposes, “There is nought of communion between light and darkness,” between life and death or else we rescind what is written, “The world shall rejoice, but ye shall grieve. If we rejoice with the world, there is reason to fear that with the world we shall grieve too. But when the world rejoices, let us grieve; and when the world afterward grieves, we shall rejoice.” If you are not unknown to be a Christian, you are tempted, and you act as if you were not a Christian against your neighbour’s conscience; if, however, you shall be disguised withal, you are the slave of the temptation. At all events, whether in the latter or the former way, you are guilty of being “ashamed of God.” But “whosoever shall be ashamed of Me in the presence of men, of him will I too be ashamed,” says He, “in the presence of my Father who is in the heavens.” CHAP. XIV.-OF BLASPHEMY. ONE OF ST. PAUL’S SAVINGS But, however, the majority (of Christians) have by this time induced the belief in their mind that it is pardonable if at any time they do what the heathen do, for fear “the Name be blasphemed.” Now the blasphemy which must quite be shunned by us in every way is, I take it, this: If any of us lead a heathen into blasphemy with good cause, either by fraud, or by injury, or by contumely, or any other matter of worthy complaint, in which “the Name” is deservedly impugned, so that the Lord, too, be deservedly angry. Else, if of all blasphemy it has been said, “By your means My Name is blasphemed,” we all perish at once; since the whole circus, with no desert of ours, assails “the Name” with wicked suffrages. Let us cease (to be Christians) and it will not be blasphemed! On the contrary, while we are, let it be blasphemed: in the observance, not the overstepping, of discipline; while we are being approved, not while we are being reprobated. Oh blasphemy, bordering on martyrdom, which now attests me to be a Christian, while for that very account it detests me! The cursing of well-maintained Discipline is a blessing of the Name. “If,” says he, “I wished to please men, I should not be Christ’s servant.” But the same apostle elsewhere bids us take care to please all: “As I,” he says, “please all by all means.” No doubt he used to please them by celebrating the **Saturnalia and New-year’s day!** [Was it so] or was it by moderation and patience? by gravity, by kindness, by integrity? In like manner, when he is saying, “I have become all things to all, that I may gain all,” does he mean “to idolaters an idolater?” “to heathens a heathen?” “to the worldly worldly?” But albeit he does not prohibit us from having our conversation with idolaters and adulterers, and the other criminals, saying, “Otherwise ye would go out from the world,” of course he does not so slacken those reins of conversation that, since it is necessary for us both to live and to mingle with sinners, we may be able to sin with them too. Where there is the intercourse of life, which the apostle concedes, there is sinning, which no one permits. To live with heathens is lawful, to die with them is not. Let us live with all; let us be glad with them, out of community of nature, **not of superstition** . We are peers in soul, not in discipline; fellow-possessors of the world, not of error. But if we have no right of communion in matters of this kind with strangers, how far more wicked to celebrate them among brethren! Who can maintain or defend this? The Holy Spirit upbraids the Jews with their holy-days. “Your Sabbaths, and new moons, and ceremonies,” says He, “My soul hateth.” By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons and festivals formerly beloved by God, **the Saturnalia and New-year’s and Midwinter’s festivals** [Note the word for “Midwinter’s festivals” is Brumae in the Latin] **and Matronalia are frequented** - presents come and go-New-year’s gifts-games join their noise-banquets join their din! Oh better fidelity of the nations to their own sect, which claims no solemnity of the Christians for itself! Not the Lord’s day, not Pentecost, even it they had known them, would they have shared with us; for they would fear lest they should seem to be Christians. We are not apprehensive lest we seem to be heathens! If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh, you have it. I will not say your own days, but more too; for to the heathens each festive day occurs but once annually: you have a festive day every eighth day. Call out the individual solemnities of the nations, and set them out into a row, they will not be able to make up a Pentecost. Tertullian. On Idolatry, Chapter XIV, c. 190 AD

More like Catholicism. The puritans were so annoyed with Catholicism and Catholic traditions that they banned every pagan symbol from the supposedly “Christian” church

@@tiredoftheworld4834 The puritans were a miserable lot, who held themselves above others as "chosen" no different than any other cult that sprung from the root of a religion that worshipped a patriarchal war god (Yahweh). As they themselves were mercilessly persecuted by the church of England, so did they enforce their cruel injustice on others in the new world.

There's a Nativ-a-Talk edition for you.