In Jeremiah 10:1-4, is God professing his dislike for what would later become known as “Christmas trees”?

On My Knees, Pleasing Jesus OMK: In Jeremiah 10:1-4, is God professing his dislike for what would later become known as “Christmas trees”?
Also, does this suggest that more than just the dates involved with Christmas are lifted from Pagan beliefs and rituals, and therefore that the way that Christmas is celebrated (not Christmas itself) goes against God?
Thanks guys, I was just reading the Bible today, and this passage, though it’s always seemed strange to me, I’ve never had the means to ask about it before.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Jennifer
Yes….the practice of Christmas is not what God wants. Jesus was NOT born on Dec 25th…>we don’t actually know the date that Jesus was born. We are not asked to remember Jesus’s birth, but we are commanded to remember his death and take the bread and wine in remembrance of his death. It specifically says the time of year that he died – around passover, so we know when he died.

That is the most important of the two.

Christmas was a pagan holiday that the early Christians took over to make the birth date of Jesus so they could try to get rid of the evil traditions of that date. However, they kept the pagan tradition of decorating a tree – the pagans did that, not Jesus.

Answer by Nightwind: Mwa ha ha!
Not really, considered that the first record of a Christmas Tree comes from 16th century Germany, which is very, very far away in both space and time from where Jeremiah is writing.

Just because two cultures decided to decorate trees doesn’t mean one borrowed from the other. it means two cultures concluded that decorating trees would be, for whatever reason, a good way of celebrating their respective holidays.

Also, my impression of Jeremiah is that the end product does NOT look like a tree. They cut down a tree so they can harvest and shape the wood into an idol, which is then decorated.

Finally, to really cement your suggestion, you’d really need to show that trees mentioned in Jeremiah celebrated something similar to Christmas, which you can’t.

Answer by prophet
It’s all the work of cunning men.

Answer by greenshootuk
For starters there is no historical evidence that the date was lifted from Pagan beliefs. That is just a popular urban myth. Most cultures used a completely different calendar and the Romans, who actually had a December 25th, had NO festival on that date before the time of Christianity.

The Jeremiah passage, if you read the WHOLE passage rather than just 4 verses, is about making wooden idols, not about decorated trees.

The Christmas tree is a Christian symbol – it represents the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden and, metaphorically, Christ himself who, like the tree of life, brings us the promise of eternal life.