But is the decorated Christmas tree a modern phenomenon? The answer may astound you.
Alexander Hislop wrote in his book The Two Babylons, “The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally common in pagan Rome and pagan Egypt. In Egypt that tree was the palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir.” So this billion-dollar business boasts a very long legacy.
The ncta fails to acknowledge a written record that precedes a.d. 1510 by about two millennia.
Biblical Trees
You may be surprised, but the Bible indeed mentions the use of what we now refer to as Christmas trees. It does so in the writings of the Prophet Jeremiah, recorded some 600 years before Christ’s physical birth.
Jeremiah did not write about a tree in relation to the birth of the coming Savior of mankind. Far from it.
Note what God recorded by the hand of this prophet: “Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel” (Jeremiah 10:1). God wants us to pay close attention to this. He demands us to hear His perspective on this custom.
“Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go” (verses 2-5).
God does not mince any words here. He outright condemns these “doctrines of vanities” (verse 8) and states that they show a lack of fear and reverence for Him as the “King of nations” (verse 7). But why? And where did these ways of the heathen originate?
Organized Rebellion Against God
During the time of the Flood, God intervened to bring Satan’s deceptive workings to a screeching halt. Man had become so perverted and evil that God was prepared to start all over (Genesis 6:5-7). Yet soon after the Flood, Satan got busy and set up another pagansystem.
The four centuries following the Flood were perhaps the most crucial in human history. They were the scene of a tremendous struggle for the control of mankind.
Covered in just the briefest detail in the Bible, 100 years after the Flood, the Mesopotamian valley had become overpopulated as Noah’s descendants fulfilled God’s command to multiply and to replenish the Earth (Genesis 9:1). Jewish historian Josephus recorded in Antiquities of the Jews:“God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of the Earth—that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the Earth, and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner: but they were so ill instructed that they did not obey God.”
Note that somebody had been teaching these people wrong principles and customs, which they carried into all corners of the Earth.
In Genesis 10:8-9, Nimrod is described as “a mighty one.” The Hebrew indicates he had become atyrant, or despot. He was known everywhere for his “might.” The name Nimrod in Hebrew is derived from marad, meaning “he rebelled.” Although later he assumed many different names, the one that matters to God is the one that describes him best: “he rebelled.”
Nimrod, Ham’s grandson, founded the Babylonian system that has gripped the world ever since. He laid the foundation of a system of organized competition. He ruled based on the competitive and profit-making economic system. Nimrod built the tower of Babel, the original Babylon, ancient Nineveh, and many other cities, and organized this world’s first kingdom—all in defiance of God.
Nimrod copied, propagated and expanded on the society and customs that had been in existence before the Flood, a system God calls the “way of Cain” (Jude 11)—a way that had led to total destruction.
From many ancient writings, much is learned of this man who started the great organized apostasyfrom God that has dominated this world until now. Nimrod was so evil, it is said he married his own mother, whose name was Semiramis.
Semiramis, through her schemings, had become known as the Babylonian “queen of heaven.” That made Nimrod the “divine son of heaven.” Together they became a perverted mother-son tandem.
Dr. C. Paul Meredith showed how “[w]ith the civil power he wielded, Nimrod set himself up as the priest of the things worshiped by the people, to obtain a stronger hold on them and gradually put himself in place of the true God” (Satan’s Great Deception).
As the self-appointed high priest of the sun god Merodach—also known as Molech or Baal—Nimrod oversaw some atrocious acts such as the purification of infants by sacrificing them in fire. This repulsed God greatly (e.g. Leviticus 18:21; Jeremiah 32:35; Ezekiel 20:31) and led to the death of Nimrod.
Nimrod’s Untimely Death
The Bible is silent on how Nimrod died, but ancient tradition says he came to a violent end. This is corroborated by the account of Osiris’s violent death, which became the central theme of Egypt’s idolatry worship.
Tradition suggests that Nimrod may have been executed by Shem, son of Noah, who was deeply opposed to Nimrod’s rebellion against God. Shem was the son who walked most closely in the ways of God that his father taught him.
Nimrod’s own violence had to be paid for with his life (Genesis 9:6), and the tradition continues that Nimrod’s body was cut in pieces, burned and then sent to various families of the Earth as a warning from God.
Nimrod was cut down, like a tree is felled by the ax.
Nimrod’s death was a shock to his followers. They couldn’t understand how or why the high priest of the sun god, this divine son of heaven, could be allowed to die. So many subjects lost faith in their hero that Nimrod’s religious system started to crumble.
The Sun God Returns
After Nimrod’s death, Semiramis became ruler of her son’s kingdom. Used by Satan, she spread the evil doctrine of the survival of Nimrod as a spirit being. She promoted a mystery religion and claimed that Nimrod now was the sun god.
The Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course stated, “While Nimrod was alive, he put himself in the place of God by his dictatorial rule. And when he died, his admirers continued to worship him as a divine hero! They called him ‘Baal,’ a name found later throughout the Old Testament. ‘Baal’ means ‘master’ or ‘lord.’ It was only natural that Nimrod should claim that name. He put himself in the very place of the true Lord or Master of the entire universe. But ‘Baal’ was not Nimrod’s only other name. He had many names. In Babylonia he was known as ‘Tammuz.’ In Syria and Greece, ‘Adonis’—which also meant ‘lord.’ In Egypt he was the god ‘Osiris,’ and was identified in ‘mystery’ symbolism as the bull!”
Semiramis also became known by various names. Encyclopedia Britannica identifies her as “connected with the doves of Ishtar or Astarte …. The irresistible charms of Semiramis, her sexual excesses and other features of the legend, all bear out the view that she is primarily a form of Astarte, and so fittingly conceived as the great queen of Assyria.”
Lange’s Commentary states that “Ashtaroth … corresponds to Hera, the Star-queen. Ashtoreth means ‘the star.’ … Moon and stars, the luminaries of the night sky, are blended in Ashtaroth. She represents the collective host of heaven.”
Semiramis was worshiped as the queen of heaven, or the great mother of god. She committed fornication with the leading men at that time, coaxing them into accepting this mystery religion that took the place of the true worship of God. She even claimed that one of her illegitimate sons, Tammuz, was brought into being by a magic beam of light from the great sun god. Claiming the baby to be a reborn Nimrod, the promised seed of Genesis 3:15, Semiramis originated the story that a full-grown evergreen tree sprang overnight from a dead tree stump, which symbolized the springing forth unto new life of the dead Nimrod. On each anniversary of his birth, Semiramis claimed, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts upon it.
The new evergreen tree symbolized that Nimrod had come to life again in Tammuz. That is the real origin of Santa Claus and the Christmas tree. It is why Jeremiah knew of the Christmas tree six centuries before Jesus Christ was even born.
