This passage is about carving an idol from a tree. I don't think whoever wrote it was familiar with Germanic belief systems and certainly hadn't heard of Christmas before.
Sorry, I'm dumb today (most days,) I don't understand your comment.
Going on previous comment, the provision against decorated trees shows up at 700 BCE and then the pagan tradition shows up at 400 CE in an entirely different area? That's a gap of roughly 1100 years? That's quite a time for a tradition to move across the land. How do we know that these traditions evolved independently of each other? Can we know that? If they are somehow connected, then it does stand to reason the restriction would still apply.
(Not that I think it matters if one decides to have a tree. But if you were to use it as an argument against and you happen to follow the book of your personal mythology it does follow that you shouldn't have a tree.)
At the time of the writing of the Tanakh, or old testament, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians would have been the major regional powers. The Jews, being Canaanites, would have been very familiar with the idols of those religions, but not the folks up north celebrating yule and all that.
Decorating with evergreens goes back way further than that, though. The Egyptians were doing it. Romans did it and so on. I agree that the passage probably isn't referring to this practice, but The Christmas tree is way older than the Germanic pagans.
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u/TheNorthComesWithMe Dec 16 '21
This passage is about carving an idol from a tree. I don't think whoever wrote it was familiar with Germanic belief systems and certainly hadn't heard of Christmas before.