For the vast majority who welcome truth in all it’s guises, please accept the blessings of Christ from a practicing Catholic. I will happily accept blessings of any denomination in return.

Merry Christmas.

a. Yes. In fact, in places where people began to put pine trees in their houses in December, many Christians at first objected to the use of the tree, because they recognized it as a pagan ritual.

b. Jeremiah 10:2-4: “Learn not the way of the heathen…for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold….” That’s about 625 years B.C. The Greek Adonia tradition would have been at least that old, too.

c. Yes. In a variety of cultures, bringing evergreens into the home was part of the solstice ritual.

Here’s a well-researched article on the subject: http://www.orlutheran.com/html/chrtree.html

My point is that currently in this country, pine trees decorated in December are now frequently called “holiday trees.” 100 years ago, they were called “Christmas trees.” 200 years ago, there was no such tradition in this country, so they would just have been called “decorated trees,” I guess.

Of course we don’t call quarters denarii. And in 100 years, when we’re not using coins any more, I won’t insist that we still call 25 cents “a quarter.”

My point is that there is no basis for saying that “Christmas tree” is right, and “holiday tree” is wrong. In our house, we put up a “Christmas tree.” At the Dublin House, it’s a “Holiday tree” (perhaps because a pine tree is not an Irish Christmas tradition?).

I can buy the claim that Christmas Trees have only been around for a century or two, but what source do you have that:

a. there is continuity between Christmas Tree practice and whatever the purported pagan practice was?

b. the pagan practice itself was more than a few generations old itself?

c. the pagan practice was in honor of the solistice? or was even semantically coherent at all?

And why did the Christmas Tree practice somehow not exist until it succeeded in “leaving Germany”?

And why does it matter when it was “accepted”?

And whose rule is it that Christianity has to invent its own unique pragmatics instead of sacramentalizing remnants of the existing world, especially considering its intention of reforming that same world?

And doesn’t your line of reasoning suggest that quarters are really denarii since the U.S. government has only been around a few hundred years while the Romans were using coinage two hundred years ago?