A Claim That Just Won’t Die
If you’ve ever wondered whether your Christmas tree is secretly pagan, you’re not alone. You’ve probably seen it online — posts or videos claiming that the Christmas tree comes from ancient Babylonian worship of Nimrod and Semiramis, that ornaments represent fertility symbols, and that Christians are unknowingly honoring pagan gods.
These ideas sound convincing, especially when wrapped in religious language about “coming out of Babylon” or “returning to biblical roots.” But are they true?
Short answer: no. These claims come from a long-debunked 19th-century book and later layers of internet speculation. They have no basis in historical or biblical evidence.
Let’s look at where these ideas came from — and what the real history of the Christmas tree actually is.
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Where the Claims Began: Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons
Most modern anti-Christmas arguments trace back to one man: Alexander Hislop (1807–1865), a Scottish Presbyterian minister.¹
In his book The Two Babylons (1858), Hislop argued that the Roman Catholic Church — and by extension, many Christian holidays — secretly borrowed from ancient Babylonian paganism.
Hislop claimed the evergreen tree was a symbol of Nimrod/Tammuz reborn.² He linked this to a supposed Babylonian tradition where a stump was cut down and a new tree (representing Tammuz) sprang up overnight. Because the tree stood upright, he further argued that it represented the phallic generative power of the sun god.
Hislop himself never claimed that ornaments represent the deity’s testicles — that idea was added much later by modern Hislop-influenced teachers.³
In the late 20th and early 21st century, certain Hebrew Roots and anti-Christmas teachers expanded Hislop’s “tree = male fertility symbol” framework. They then speculated that the round ornaments represented “fertility spheres” or “testicles of pagan gods.”
This claim about the ornaments appears nowhere in ancient history and nowhere in Hislop’s actual writings.
Still, the broader pattern remains the same:
- Nimrod and Semiramis were supposedly the origin of all false religion.⁴
- The evergreen tree supposedly symbolized Tammuz, a “reborn sun god.”²
- Ornaments supposedly symbolized fertility or male anatomy.³
Sounds sensational — and that’s the problem.
Hislop’s “research” was built on synchronism — the assumption that if two practices look similar, they must share a pagan origin.⁵ He stitched together myths, linguistic leaps, and unrelated cultural symbols to build a theory modern scholars reject outright.⁶
Why These Claims Fall Apart
1. No Babylonian Evidence Exists
There is zero archaeological or textual support for the claim that the Babylonians used evergreen trees to honor gods or practiced anything resembling Christmas-tree traditions.⁷ Hislop’s connections between Nimrod, Tammuz, and evergreen worship are speculative at best and linguistically false.⁸
2. Hislop Invented the Nimrod–Semiramis Lineage
Babylonian and Assyrian records never identify Semiramis as Nimrod’s wife or Tammuz’s mother.⁹ Hislop merged unrelated myths from multiple cultures and treated them as a single tradition.
Modern historians — including Ralph Woodrow, who once supported Hislop’s work but later recanted — have thoroughly debunked these claims.⁶
“Hislop built an entire system on a foundation of sand.”
— Ralph Woodrow, The Babylon Connection?You May Like: The King’s Birth Sermon Media Package (Free Download)
The Real Story: The Christmas Tree in Germany
The modern Christmas tree began in 16th-century Germany, not ancient Babylon.¹⁰
In Protestant homes, families decorated evergreens on Christmas Eve — the feast day of Adam and Eve — to remember:
- The Tree of Paradise (Genesis)
- The Tree of Life (Revelation)
Early decorations included:
- Candles → Christ as the Light of the World
- Apples → the fruit from Eden
- Wafers → the bread of communion
When apples were scarce, glassblowers in Lauscha, Germany, began crafting shiny glass apples in the 1800s. These became the first Christmas ornaments — practical, not pagan.¹¹
The tree tradition spread to England through Prince Albert, then to America in the 1800s.¹²
Why Christians Can Celebrate With A Tree Without Fear
When people repeat myths about Christmas trees having pagan origins, they’re repeating a conspiracy theory, not biblical truth. Most Christians who repeat these claims aren’t trying to deceive anyone. They’re simply repeating what they’ve heard. But sincerity is not the same as accuracy, and truth matters.
Yes, ancient cultures used trees in various rituals — but so does the Bible.
Scripture is full of holy tree imagery:
- The Tree of Life (Gen. 2; Rev. 22)
- The olive tree (Rom. 11)
- The righteous as “a tree planted by water” (Psalm 1)
- Jesus bearing our curse “on a tree” (1 Pet. 2:24)
The problem isn’t evergreens; it’s idolatry.
What matters is what and whom we worship.
If your Christmas tree points your family toward Christ — the Light and Life of the world — then your celebration is redeemed, not pagan.
Final Thought
The Bible doesn’t command Christians to have a Christmas tree — but it also doesn’t forbid it.
The issue isn’t the tree; it’s the heart behind it.
So this year, don’t let fear or internet speculation steal your joy.
Let every light, song, and decoration remind you of the greatest truth:
“The Word became flesh and made His home among us.” — John 1:14
Your Christmas tree is not about Babylon — it’s about Bethlehem.
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Footnotes
- Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons (Edinburgh: Partridge & Co., 1858).
- Hislop, The Two Babylons, Ch. III, Sec. I (“Christmas and Lady-Day”), pp. 97–102 (varies by edition).
- For modern expansions of Hislop’s ideas, see refutations in Ralph Woodrow, The Babylon Connection? (Ralph Woodrow Evangelistic Association, 2000), 33–38.
- Hislop, Two Babylons, Introduction & Ch. II.
- Woodrow, Babylon Connection?, 20–25 (critique of Hislop’s synchronism).
- Ibid., the entire work is a scholarly refutation by a former Hislop supporter.
- Samuel N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology (Harper, 1961); Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia (University of Chicago Press, 2001).
- John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Baker Academic, 2006), 97–112.
- Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University Press, 2000); Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser III mention Semiramis (Shammuramat) only as a historical queen, not a goddess or mother of Tammuz.
- David J. Johnson, Christmas Customs and Traditions (Philosophical Library, 1961), 115.
- Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 57.
- Penne Restad, Christmas in America: A History (Oxford University Press, 1995), 79–88.
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