The story of the Christmas tree’s origins has roots in central Europe’s mythical past.
Indeed, one must apply the word “mythical” to the story’s central actors, in part because they lived so long ago that very little written evidence of their exploits has survived, and in part because they crossed paths with people who still held a pre-Christian worldview.
Early in the eighth century, the Catholic St. Boniface used a small fir tree to convert German pagans to Christianity. Over time, that small fir came to be known as the first Christmas tree.
The details of the story, as they have come down to us, contain dramatic and heroic elements.
Moreover, one cannot help but see the hand of God in this centuries-old tale, for the story as a whole highlights issues that remain relevant in the modern world, including child sacrifice and the question of how Christians should view paganism.
The Original Christmas Tree
According to the media ministry Catholic Answers, Boniface, whom church historian John C. Vidmar called “probably the greatest missionary since St. Paul,” traveled in 721 to the German region of Hesse (Germany, of course, would not exist as a nation-state for more than a thousand years), where Pope Gregory II made him an archbishop.
A few years later, Boniface led a group of missionaries to the German village of Geismar. He knew that terrible things happened there. In winter, villagers gathered around an old oak tree called the “Thunder Oak.” There, they offered a human sacrifice, often a small child, to the pagan god Thor.
On Christmas Eve, Boniface decided to end the ritual by force.
“Here is the Thunder Oak; and here the cross of Christ shall break the hammer of the false god Thor,” he reportedly declared.
According to the Catholic news and culture site ChurchPOP, Boniface first used his bishops’ staff to physically block the executioner’s blow and thus save the child’s life.
“Hearken, sons of the forest! No blood shall flow this night save that which pity has drawn from a mother’s breast. For this is the birth-night of the Christ, the son of the Almighty, the Savior of mankind … And now on this Christ-night you shall begin to live. This blood-tree shall darken your land no more. In the name of the Lord, I will destroy it,” he said.
Then, the brave missionary took an axe and felled the Thunder Oak.
Boniface, however, did not leave the astonished pagans with a scene of mere destruction.
Indeed, having toppled Thor’s mighty oak, the Catholic missionary then pointed to a small fir tree nearby.
“This little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree tonight,” he said. “It is the wood of peace … It is the sign of an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child; gather about it, not in the wild wood, but in your own homes; there it will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.”
Boniface, of course, lived long ago. He lived so long ago, in fact, that he traveled freely through German lands thanks to the protection of the powerful Frankish ruler Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne.
Nonetheless, Boniface made a lasting impact on religious life in those German regions.
In fact, the tradition of marking Christ’s birth by bringing evergreen trees into private homes persisted for many centuries thereafter, and German immigrants carried that tradition to North America in the eighteenth century, per Catholic Answers.
Child Sacrifice and Paganism
The story of the original Christmas tree has relevance in the modern world for two reasons.
First, Boniface did not simply destroy the Thunder Oak. He saved a child’s life.
This should remind all Christians that the pagan practice of child sacrifice persists to this day. Whereas eighth-century Germans sacrificed children to Thor, inhabitants of the modern world sacrifice them to convenience, career, or ideology.
Second — and this will take a bit more time to unpack — the story of the Christmas tree’s origins raises the question of how Christians should view pagans and paganism in general.
Note, for instance, that Boniface did not discard the entire pagan ceremony. He stopped the child sacrifice and toppled the oak, but he also provided a Christ-centered substitute for the large tree.
In a way, that represented an acknowledgment that the pagans, for all their errors, had not gotten things entirely wrong.
Here one thinks of legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis, who noted that pagans, too, might have experienced some divine revelation.
“If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth,” Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity” (1952).
Lewis, in fact, used similar language to describe what one might characterize as pagan premonitions of Christ.
God, Lewis wrote, “sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.”
What matters, however, is what people do with the knowledge of the historical Jesus. Do they accept Christ as Savior? Or do they cling to pagan beliefs and practices?
For instance, in an essay titled “First and Second Things,” which appeared in “God in the Dock” (1970), Lewis described the 20th-century Nazis as “the only people in Europe who have tried to revive their pre-Christian mythology as a living faith.”
In short, Boniface used the original Christmas tree to help German pagans embrace Christianity.
Alas, more than 12 centuries later the descendants of those German pagans rejected Christ’s light and chose totalitarian darkness.
Thus, let the Christmas tree’s origin story remind modern Christians of our obligation to fight the twin evils of child sacrifice and secular totalitarianism.
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