IN MANY parts of the world, the evergreen
Christmas tree is a well-known symbol in holiday celebrations and commerce. The
religious origin of the tree runs deep and stretches far back in human history.
This is evident in Bohuslän Province on the
west coast of Sweden and in the nearby province of Østfold in Norway. In those
areas, more than 75,000 individual rock carvings have been found at some 5,000
different sites. Archaeologists say that many of these rock carvings were made
between about 1,800 and 500 B.C.E.
These remarkable carvings reveal something
about the beliefs of people who lived a very long time before the birth of
Jesus of Nazareth. For example, some researchers think that in early times in
areas of present-day Sweden and Norway, evergreen trees, such as spruces, were
used as sacred symbols.
Why was it that people living in these far
northern coastal areas of the world made rock carvings of spruce trees? Some
scholars suggest it was partly because of the evident rarity of those trees
during the pre-Christian times when the carvings were made. Understandably, a
tree that stays permanently green, or “alive,” when other trees seemingly die
in cold weather must have been somewhat of a mystery.
Trees have been symbols of life, survival,
and immortality in many cultures worldwide. This fact may also help explain why
tree images that clearly resemble evergreen spruces were carved into rocks in
the area of Bohuslän and Østfold many centuries before that tree became a
common sight there.
The book Rock Carvings in
the Borderlands, published in cooperation with the Swedish
National Heritage Board, says: “The images of trees in rock carvings illustrate
that as early as the Bronze Age the southern Scandinavian region was part of a
larger religious and cultural context that covered the whole of Europe and
large parts of Asia. Religion and cosmology were adapted to people whose
livelihoods were farming and animal husbandry. They largely worshipped the same
gods, although the names of the gods varied.”
The Rock Carving Tour, a
booklet published by the Bohusläns Museum, further explains: “It was not the
everyday world the rock carvers wanted to portray. We believe that their images
perhaps were a form of prayer and invocation to the gods.” The booklet adds: “Beliefs
revolved around the eternal circle of life, fertility, death and re-birth.”
Describing a unique collection of symbolic
art, created long before the art of writing was introduced into northern
Europe, Nationalencyklopedin, the Swedish national reference
encyclopedia, notes: “The marked presence of sexually charged depictions shows
how important a fertility cult was in the religion of the Bronze Age people in
the North.”
Evidently, customs involving evergreen trees
spread and became part of life in many places. The Encyclopædia Britannica
states regarding the Christmas tree: “Tree worship was common among the pagan
Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity.” It did so in various
rites and customs, including “the custom . . . of placing a Yule tree
at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays.”
The broad way leading the evergreen tree to
modern popularity was paved in 1841 when the British royal family used a
decorated spruce for their Christmas celebrations. Today the Christmas tree is
recognized all over the world, and the demand for countless millions of natural
and artificial Christmas trees seems endless. Meanwhile, Scandinavian rock
carvings provide silent testimony, literally set in stone, that the Christmas
tree is not of Christian origin.
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