ABSTRACT
Christmas is associated for us with hopes for peace in the world (be they religious or secular), with giving and receiving presents, with cozy family reunions or merry festivities. But that the Christmas Tree could teach us something may be a surprising idea. The custom of the Christmas tree allows us quite well to illustrate one essential feature of what is genuinely mythic in a wider sense (including myth, ritual, symbol), and Jung pointed repeatedly to this feature. The original meaning of the Christmas tree had two distinct roots, a pagan and a Christian one. Part of the pagan symbolism are the evergreen world tree, the individual’s tree of life, the mid-winter vegetation and solstice festival (which among Germanic peoples was celebrated with a burning Yule log), perhaps even the Levantine mythology of the dying god. Christmas tree is that the symbol of the birth of light from out of the deepest darkness.
