Is it your contention that initiatives like the Salvation Army would be impossible without Christianism, or that atheists don’t feel any empathy for their fellow men ? There are plenty of non-Christian charities. And they don’t use the charity work as an excuse to push their ideology upon the chariteed either, unlike some Christian charities I could name. Spreading religion by blackmailing the poor and the desperate is a pretty rotten thing to do if you ask me.
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I thought it was related to the yule log? Christmas trees are an old German custom, right?
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Yes and no.
The specific “Christmas tree” in its modern incarnation pretty clearly got off the ground in northern Germany around the 15th or 16th century and spread from there piggybacking on the spread of Lutheranism ; and it really was more or less just about “Ain’t this pretty ? We think it’s pretty. And you can hang pretzels from it for the kleine Kinder, too !”.
But using (and decorating) trees as symbolic ornamentation and as part of religious or quasi-religious practices is a very, very old custom among the Germanic folk. They worshipped sacred oaks as part of the cult of Donar/Thor, Odin/Wotan was hanged from a tree then speared and they’d re-enact the scene using prisoners or wilful sacrifices, there was a whole symbolism/parallelism connection going on with Yggdrasil/the World Tree ; and they worshipped evergreen trees like the pine or the fir as symbols of endurance, resilience, that sort of stuff as well.
In fact, according to some folklorists, the Christmas tree symbolism should be traced aaaall the way back to the 6th or 7th century when Saint Idontrememberhisname strolled into Germany to convert the natives, a big old axe in his hand because back then missionaries were no fricken pussies. His star act supposedly would be to go into the sacred groves to cut down the oaks like some sort of assholish Paul Bunyan and then go “Am I being struck by lightning ? Well, am I ? SO WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW ?!”. Naturally, as the legends go, everyone would immediately be awestruck by this indisputable rhetoric, blinded by the Truth of Lord Jesus Christ Peace Be Upon Him and converted on the spot. I have my doubts :p. But anyway, according to these folklorists, the newly converted Christians would keep the felled oaks around to remind them that Thor didn’t work, and kept cutting new ones every year when the previous ones rotted away, etc…
Yule is another, different tree-hugging pagan Germanic tradition, which wasn’t a religious celebration as much as it was an ad-hoc calendar marker of the equinox, just like the Saturnalias (though no doubt they’d thank the gods or the genus loci or whatever that the years kept turning 'round), and the Yule log was just a big hunk of wood or even an entire tree the people would parade around town, dance around then make a big bonfire out of to keep warm throughout the Yule feast (and, possibly, as a symbol that winter was coming to an end soonish, here’s the last fire needed this year, etc…). But they didn’t really decorate it or keep it in the town square for weeks or anything of the sort that I’m aware of - the point of it was the fire, not the wood, if you follow my meaning.
At this time it’s really difficult to establish which came first in the Livonian Germanic Unconscious that would give rise to the Xmas tree: the trees as important symbols or the religion centered around dolled up trees ; and how much of it is old lore and heathen worship spread by word of mouth among the medieval peasantry, who regardless of what the dour priests said would remember that some things oughta be done at some times, but not necessarily *why *they should be done…
