Is the Christmas Tree a Christian Symbol?
– It certainly didn’t start out that way. As mentioned before, evergreens were used in midwinter celebrations by several pre-Christian European cultures. If the church of the “Dark Ages” hadn’t decided to start celebrating Christmas around the date of those pagan mid-winter feasts, we probably wouldn’t even have Christmas trees today. And there’s certainly no guarantee that people who use and love Christmas trees have any interest in the Person for whom Christmas is named. Yet for most families, a Christmas tree is at least a symbol of family, of memories of good times past, and in some ways, of hope for the future. To me, if a Christmas tree puts someone in the mood to sing about the birth of Jesus, that can’t be all bad. Ironically, in late 2006, an activist demanded that the airport in Seattle, Washington remove its Christmas trees, because for him the trees signified Jesus’ birth as much as a Nativity scene or any other cultural icon. If nothing else, this indicates that in America
