Christmas and Christmas tree!!

I and Kiran visited the Christmas market in the centre of Brno called Freedom Square (Namesti Svobody). I had to buy some gift as “Secret Santa” which was organized by my colleagues in the office. So what better place there could be to buy a gift for Christmas than a Christmas market?

It was freezing -9 degrees outside and we met after work in the square. The smell of the market in that freezing temperature was very inviting indeed. There were smell of hot wine, burning wood to prepare snacks, sweets, sausages and etc.
Children were all over the place shouting with excitement. It was a typical festival market scene. There was also this huge screen which was showing some local cartoons for the toddlers. We had our share of hot honey wine (yummy it was), potato pancakes and some sweets.

And then my attention fell on the Christmas tree and all of a sudden a question popped into my head.
“If Christianity was born in Jerusalem, a place where no coniferous trees grows anywhere nearby, then how come coniferous trees are accepted as representation of Christianity and called as a Christmas tree?”

The next day I was with my colleagues for lunch and I put this question to them. 30 percent of people in Czech Republic are Atheists (This is not the reason why I am an Atheist by the way).
In Czech Republic most people are non believers/Atheists because of the history of communism rule over them for more than few decades.

Ok! Coming back to my (earth shattering) question, it looked like even they had not thought why Coniferous tree is called Christmas tree. They were amazed by this question after all.

One of my colleagues’ gave a possible “theory” which could be that- In Europe before Christianity arrived; there were several local religions which prayed nature spirits like tree, sun, moon, wind etc. There were Celtic religions, gothic religions etc and etc.
So when Christianity overtook other “barbaric” (that’s what the catholic Romans called other religions) European religions and when local Celtic and Gothic people started to get themselves converted to Christianity they might have adopted their own nature spirits as one of the Christian traditions. This might have also included the trees which grew in abundance here- coniferous trees.

Another colleague told us that there is also some tradition where people put the trees upside down during Christmas and she had no clue why they exhibit such bizarre tradition. I cracked a joke that maybe they wanted to hang the tree in order let the tree “spirit” to jump out of it easily which otherwise might not be easier :o). We were laughing like mad people at this.

Then I remembered the plastic coniferous trees that will be exhibited in Indian households during Christmas. I mean what is the point in keeping a tree made out of plastic as Christmas tree (which loses its colour after sometime) when it does not even grow there (except in Himalayas maybe).
I wonder why wouldn't Indian Christians use coconut tree or banana tree or say banyan tree as a Christmas tree? These are the ones which grow in India isn’t it?
To me this sounds logical. We should be proud to use natural things grown in India itself and that should be the real "spirit" according to me :)

Disclaimer: This article is not written against any religion nor this article is meant to mock any religious group as such. This is just a light note my thoughts.

Picture Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Godey%27streeDec1850.GIF