by K.D. Saffron

Created on: July 30, 2008   Last Updated: August 13, 2008

"Oh Tannenbaum, Oh Tannenbaum"..."Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree"....regardless of our language or religious affiliation, orientation, or heritage, under no circumstance is the Christmas tree a religious symbol. None of the five major religions of the world have adopted the Christmas tree as one of their religious symbols. The houses of worship are not adorned with Christmas trees throughout the three hundred and sixy-five days of a year, so that its parishioners can use "the tree" in their worship service. Therefore, since the Christmas tree does not represent a religious symbol to any particular religion, as religious symbols are defined, supports the reason we often see the tree displayed in public places during a particular holiday season. The "tree" cannot violate the separation of church and state, since the "tree" is not a religious symbol. The good news is that it is just another tree that people decorate every year, in a particular way at a particular time.

There has been much discussion regarding the symbology of this tree. It originated a long time ago in Germany. Historically, the United States did not immediately begin to use the tree as a symbol....its presence evolved and later became fashionable and accepted in our society. The whole social aspect centered around a Christmas tree is this: who on a particular block can "out do" who this year....it's simply a very commercial aspect of a very expensive holiday season. Let's face it; there are so many forms of this tree depending on the fashion of the day. We can determine what decade we were in by the type or style of Christmas tree that was on display in stores, public places, and private homes.

People always seem to long for that "old-fashioned" Christmas, whereby they actually go out into the proverbial woods and cut down a perfectly fine tree, strap it to a huge gas guzzling SUV, and trudge on home only to find that its too big for the entrance to the garage door and must be shortened on the lawn. This was the Christmas tree of the 1940's and 50's. Next, we experienced the 60's with the sex, drugs, and rock and roll generation...peace, love, war....no more with a silver metallic Christmas tree in every front living room perched up in the front window with the electric circular colored rotating disk to illuminate the most fantastic tree around and a symbol of our religion, NOT. More likely a symbol of our drug induced trip of our minds as we all gathered under the fallen metallic branches.

Later came the 1970's and early 80's and the wonderful invention and the WalMart favorite, the realistic green fir tree with already attached twinkling lights of either plain white or color depending on our couth. For the refined consumer, the plain white twinklers flew off every shelf...how easy to decorate cutting the time we really needed to spend on such a religious symbol. Yes, the answer to the Christmas tree question was solved by the Chinese once again....new fake green pine and fir trees all around the town to show our true spirit of Christmas and when finished all can be easily packed away in their respective boxes one fake limb at a time.

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