A Word of Honesty
I want to be honest with you from the start. I am not a scholar. I am not a rabbi. I am someone who is on a journey, learning as I go, making mistakes along the way, and sharing what I find with anyone who is willing to listen. This paper is not meant to be the final word on anything. It is my position, based on my research, and I am open to discussion and correction.
But here is what I know for sure: YaHoWaH speaks to His people before they even understand what He is saying.
Years before I ever studied Torah, before I ever heard the word "Israelite" used the way I understand it today, something happened to me at Christmas. I stopped enjoying it. Not because someone told me to stop. Not because I read a book. I just felt something was wrong. Every Christmas morning I would get in my car and drive around because something in my spirit felt so disconnected from the holiday. I still believed in everything I had been taught at that point, but Christmas just did not sit right with me anymore. My spirit was grieved by it.
It was not until years later, after leaving the church, after meeting my husband Yahel, and after beginning to study a Torah way of life, that I came across a passage in Jeremiah that made me stop and say: Wait. I think I know what that is.
That moment is what led to this paper. I never dug into it deeply until now. And what I found is, I believe, worth sharing.
The Scripture That Started It All
Let us go to the book of Jeremiah, chapter 10, verses 3 through 5. This is from the King James Bible, with the name YaHoWaH restored in place of LORD:
When you read that slowly, you might find yourself thinking what I thought: that sounds like a Christmas tree. A tree cut from the forest. Decorated with silver and gold. Fastened so it will not fall over. Standing upright in the room.
Now, there are people who will say that Jeremiah was not talking about Christmas. They will say he was talking about carved wooden idols, and that the Christmas tradition did not even exist until the 1500s. That is a fair argument, and we will address it honestly in this paper. But here is the thing: just because something was not written down until the 1500s does not mean the idea behind it is new. And that is exactly what this paper is about.
Who Was Jeremiah, and What Was Happening?
To understand what Jeremiah was saying, we need to understand when he was saying it and why.
Jeremiah was a prophet who lived approximately from 650 BC to 585 BC. He was called by YaHoWaH during one of the most dangerous and unstable times in the history of the people of Judah. The great empire of Assyria was falling apart. A new empire, Babylon, was rising in its place. And the people of Judah were caught in the middle.
But the bigger problem was not political. It was spiritual. The people of Judah, despite being in a covenant relationship with YaHoWaH, had turned away from Him. They had picked up the religious practices of the nations around them. They were worshiping other gods. They were building idols. Their leaders had led them astray. And YaHoWaH sent Jeremiah to warn them: if they did not turn back, they would be taken into captivity in Babylon.
So when Jeremiah spoke about cutting down a tree and decorating it, he was not making up a hypothetical situation. This was something the people of his time were actually doing. They were copying the religious practices of their neighbors, the Canaanites, the Babylonians, and others who used trees and wooden carvings as part of idol worship.
This is important because it shows us that the practice of using trees in religious ceremonies did not start in Germany in the 1500s. It is ancient. It goes back at least to the time of Jeremiah, around 600 BC, and almost certainly further back than that.
The Ancient World and Tree Worship
The nations surrounding Israel had long traditions of using trees, evergreens, and nature in their worship. These were not isolated customs. They were deeply embedded in the religious life of the ancient world, and they flowed directly into the practices that eventually became associated with December celebrations.
The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Romans, and the northern European tribes all had winter festivals connected to the sun, the return of light, and the use of evergreen plants to mark the season. When Rome established December 25 as the feast of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, it was drawing on centuries of practice that long predated any Christian observance.
When Christianity spread into the Germanic and Celtic regions of northern Europe, it encountered peoples who had been using trees and evergreens in winter ceremonies for generations. Rather than abolishing those practices, the church absorbed and renamed them. The evergreen became the Christmas tree. The winter solstice festival became Christmas. The practices changed names. The roots did not change.
What YaHoWaH Said About the Practices of the Nations
This is not a matter of interpretation. YaHoWaH was explicit about His people adopting the practices of the nations around them.
The question YaHoWaH was addressing is exactly the one many Christians ask today: what is wrong with doing the same things the nations do, as long as we are doing them for God? His answer was clear: do not even ask how they served their gods, because the act of inquiring is the beginning of adopting. The form matters, not just the intention.
Learn not the way of the heathen. Not: learn their ways but do them with a pure heart. Not: adopt their forms but rename them for Me. Learn them not.
What Others Say, and My Response
I want to handle the counterarguments fairly because I believe truth can withstand honest questions. These are the most common responses I have encountered.
Jeremiah was addressing carved wooden idols, not decorated holiday trees.
This is true in a narrow sense. Jeremiah was addressing carved wooden idols, not decorated holiday trees. He was specifically warning against making an idol out of wood and worshiping it. Scholars point out that the Christmas tradition, as we know it, did not exist in Jeremiah's time, so we cannot say he was condemning it directly.
My response: I agree that Jeremiah was not literally describing a Christmas tree. What I am saying is that the spiritual impulse behind both practices is the same. Whether you are carving a wooden idol in 600 BC or decorating an evergreen in the twenty-first century, the root of the practice traces back to pagan worship of nature, the sun, and the forces of winter. YaHoWaH condemned that impulse clearly.
The Christmas tradition only appeared in the 1500s, so it cannot be connected to ancient paganism.
This is the argument that new Christian traditions are not automatically pagan just because they are new. Many argue that Christians simply created their own traditions over time.
My response: The 1500s did not exist in a vacuum. Latvia and Germany, where the Christmas tradition first appeared in writing, were cultures with very recent and still-living pagan traditions. The people participating in those first documented Christmas observances came directly from cultures that had worshiped trees and evergreens as part of winter festivals for hundreds of years. The tradition did not come out of nowhere. It came out of a long unbroken chain of practice that goes back through Rome, through the Germanic tribes, and ultimately back to the ancient world that Jeremiah was addressing.
Christians do not worship the tree, so it is not idolatry.
Many people say they are simply decorating for fun or for family tradition, not worshiping anything. They are not bowing down to a tree. They are not praying to it.
My response: This is where it is worth asking a deeper question. YaHoWaH did not just tell His people not to bow to idols. He told them not to learn the ways of the nations. He told them not to adopt the religious practices of the people around them, even if they reframed those practices as being for Him. The act itself, not just the intention, mattered to Him. Deuteronomy 12:30-31 says not to inquire after their gods and ask how these nations served them, and then do the same thing for YaHoWaH. The form matters, not just the heart behind it.
When YaHoWaH Told Me Before I Understood Why
Long before I knew any of this, YaHoWaH began pulling Christmas out of my heart. I still believed in Jesus at that time. I had not yet discovered the things I know now. But Christmas stopped feeling right. Every December, while everyone around me was celebrating, I felt empty. Disconnected. I remember Christmas mornings where I would just get in my car and drive around because I had nowhere that felt right to go and nothing inside me that wanted to celebrate.
I did not understand it then. I thought something was wrong with me.
But looking back, I believe YaHoWaH was already separating me from something He did not want me connected to. Long before the scriptures made it clear to me intellectually, He made it clear in my spirit. He was repairing a breach I did not even know existed yet.
I share this not to make myself special, but to say this: if you are reading this and something in your spirit has been restless about Christmas, pay attention to that. You may be where I was. Your spirit may be hearing something your mind has not caught up to yet.
What About Giving Gifts in December?
This is a question I wrestle with myself, and I want to be transparent about that.
There have been times when I told myself that even if I was not putting up a tree, I could still give gifts to people in December as a way of showing love. Just thank you gifts. Not Christmas gifts. Just love.
But the question I keep coming back to is this: if I am giving gifts during a season that is defined by Christmas, and the person receiving them knows it is Christmas season, does my intention fully separate my action from the practice?
I do not have a complete answer. I am still working through this.
My husband Yahel offered a thought worth considering: what if the giving happened before the Christmas season began? What if the gift was given earlier, in a context that was clearly not connected to the December holiday? That might be a way to honor the people you love without participating in a tradition rooted in what we have studied here.
What I do know is that gift-giving itself is not wrong. Generosity is a beautiful thing. What matters is the context, the timing, the framing, and your own honest conversation with YaHoWaH about it. Do not let anyone pressure you in either direction. Seek Him about it personally and let His spirit lead you.
What About Family Members Who Celebrate Christmas?
This may be the hardest part of all of this.
I have been there. I am there. I have a mother who loves Christmas deeply. She is a Catholic and a Christian, and the holiday means everything to her. And living in her home, I have found myself putting up a tree for her, decorating it late into the night, doing the thing I felt in my spirit I should not be doing, because I loved her and did not want to hurt her.
I understand that tension. I am not standing here pretending I have it all together.
But here is what I have learned, and what I believe applies to anyone in this situation: you can love someone fully and still say no to participating in something your conscience will not allow. Love does not require agreement. It does not require performance. You can honor your mother or your father or your spouse or your children without honoring a practice that YaHoWaH has laid on your heart to step away from.
How you handle it matters. The spirit in which you say no matters more than the no itself. You do not have to condemn anyone. You do not have to lecture at the dinner table. You do not have to hand someone this paper and demand they read it. You can simply say: I love you, and this is something I can no longer do in good conscience. It is not about you. It is between me and YaHoWaH.
That is not rejection. That is integrity.
And here is the other thing worth saying: you are allowed to be patient with yourself. Leaving a tradition that has been part of your entire life, especially one tied to family and memories and warmth, is not easy. It is a process. Give yourself grace. Give your family grace. Stay in the conversation with YaHoWaH, and trust Him to lead you in how to love the people around you while walking in what He has shown you.
The Position, Plainly Stated
The Roman Empire carried those ancient practices forward through Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. Northern European cultures like the Germanic tribes, the Vikings, and the Celts kept tree worship alive through the Middle Ages. When Christianity spread into those regions, it absorbed those traditions and repackaged them as Christmas customs. The 1500s did not create Christmas. They documented a culture that had been practicing something very similar for thousands of years.
This does not mean that everyone who celebrates Christmas is consciously worshiping the sun. Most people are simply doing what their families have always done. This is not a paper of condemnation. It is a paper of information.
But for those of us who are trying to walk in alignment with YaHoWaH's Word and separate from the ways of the nations, as He has commanded, this research matters. What we do, even if we do not understand why we are doing it, has roots. And it is worth knowing what those roots are.
YaHoWaH said in Isaiah 58:12 that His people would be called the repairers of the breach. That is the heartbeat of this ministry. Repairing the breach means being willing to look honestly at what was broken, even when it is uncomfortable. Even when it costs something. Even when it means disappointing people we love.
If this paper has stirred something in you, that is not an accident. Ask YaHoWaH about it. Study it for yourself. Do not just take my word for it. I am still learning, still growing, still making mistakes. But I am committed to sharing what I find as honestly and as clearly as I can.
And if your spirit has been restless about Christmas for a long time, maybe now you know a little more about why.
This paper represents the personal research and position of the author. It is offered as a starting point for study and conversation, not as a final doctrinal statement. The author acknowledges counterarguments in good faith and encourages every reader to seek YaHoWaH's guidance directly.
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