A Christmas tree is usually a decorated conifer tree or an artificial tree of a similar appearance.
A conifer tree is one that carries cones and has needle-like or scale-like leaves that are typically evergreen (examples: fir, spruce or pine trees).
While the Christmas tree is an essential part of the Christmas celebrations, evergreen trees have been used to celebrate winter festivals long before the advent of Christianity.
E.g., winters in parts of modern-day Europe were tough.
And Pagans used branches of evergreen trees to decorate their homes during the winter solstice (shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year).
They did it because evergreen trees made them think of the spring to come.
And spring has historically been associated with fertility and growth across many cultures.
So, the idea of bringing the evergreen into the house meant bringing in new life in the darkness of winter.
Eventually, the practice evolved into a Christmas tree during Christmas—an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.
And there are several theories on how this happened.
The most prominent theory attributes the association of the Christmas tree with Christmas to the Christian monk Boniface.
Monk Boniface, who was in Germany for his missionary work, one day saw Germans sacrificing animals before an oak tree (the oak tree was considered sacred).
He took the axe and felled the tree to stop Pagans’ practice of sacrificing animals.
Pagans thought their God would punish Boniface, and he would be struck by lightning.
That never happened, and Boniface took the opportunity to convert those Pagans into Christians.
Legend has it that a fir tree grew out of the fallen oak and became a symbol of Christ.
Being triangular in shape, the tree was taken to represent the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the holy spirit).
From here, modern Christmas trees emerged in western Germany during the 1500s.
German Christians brought trees into their homes and decorated them with gingerbread, nuts and apples.
Britain’s Queen Victoria’sGreat-great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II. mother was a German, and she brought the practice of decorating Christmas trees to England.
Then in 1848, a drawing of the British royal family celebrating around a decorated Christmas tree in Windsor Castle was published by the Illustrated London News.
And this event popularised the decoration of the Christmas tree in England and from there it spread across the world.
