The Propaganda Hiding in Your Christmas Tree

I want to pick up where we left off on propaganda because the holidays are one of the clearest places to see it hiding in plain sight.

As you're sitting around this Christmas, I want you actually to look around the room. Look at the traditions. Look at the decorations. Look at the things we've been told are "Christian values," "family traditions," or "just what we do."

And then ask a simple question: Where did this actually come from?

Not to judge it. Not to ruin it. Not to take joy away from it. Just to recognize it.

So many of the things we do, we don't really know why we do them. We just inherited them from advertising, from politics, from religion, from other cultures, from systems designed to shape behavior.

The Red Coat Wasn't Always There

Take something simple: Santa Claus. Why is his coat red?

That wasn't an ancient tradition. That was Mad Men-era advertising. Coca-Cola wanted a red Santa. They got one. And now it feels "normal," almost sacred.

That's how propaganda works. Not loudly. Quietly. Comfortably.

Everything You Think Is Christian Probably Isn't

Let's go deeper.

Santa himself? A remix of Odin, the Norse god who rode through the winter skies on an eight-legged horse, had a long white beard and bestowed gifts on his followers during Yule. Christianity didn't invent him. They rebranded him. Added Saint Nicholas. Threw in some Dutch Sinterklaas. Marketing did the rest.

The Christmas tree? Pagan. Evergreens symbolized life surviving winter. The ornaments, originally apples, sun symbols, and small charms, were fertility and protection rituals. Christianity absorbed it, reinterpreted its meanings, and claimed it as its own.

The 12 days of Christmas? Winter solstice festivals. Drinking, feasting, and gift-giving across multiple days are standard pagan practices. Christianity mapped its calendar onto preexisting rhythms.

Mistletoe? Sacred to Druids and Norse traditions. Romans incorporated it into Saturnalia. Kissing under it didn't come from the Bible.

The Yule log? Unambiguously pagan. Christianity didn't even try to hide this one, just baptized it.

Caroling? Wassailing and communal singing during the solstice. Add theology, keep the melody.

The star on top of the tree? Pentagrams and stars were pagan symbols of elements, harmony, and cycles. Early Christianity actually used the pentagram positively (five wounds of Christ). It only became "satanic" much later: medieval demonology, Victorian moral panic, 20th-century pop occultism. The association is historically late and culturally constructed.

December 25th itself? That was Sol Invictus, the Roman "Unconquered Sun" festival. Pope Julius I didn't pick Jesus's real birthday. He chose a date already sacred, aligned Christ with the "true light" narrative, and made conversion easier.

This wasn't sloppy. This was a strategy.

The Contradiction Is the Point

When you zoom out, you start to see how many traditions were borrowed, repackaged, stripped of original meaning, and handed back to us as the only way. One way to celebrate. One way to believe. One way to belong.

Christianity didn't replace paganism. It absorbed it. Then later generations:

1. Forgot the origins

2. Moralized the symbols

3. Declared earlier, meanings "evil"

That creates the contradiction you feel:

• Keep the symbols

• Deny their origins

• Demonize the source cultures

That's not logic. That's power, continuity, and narrative control.

So What Do We Do With This?

I'm not saying throw it all out.

I'm saying be conscious.

We're at a point in life, culturally, personally, spiritually, where we're allowed to step back and ask questions again. We don't have to run on autopilot.

So maybe this year, while you're sitting with your family, take a breath. Notice what you're doing and why.

And maybe next year, instead of everyone exchanging a $40 gift nobody really wanted, we rethink the tradition entirely.

What If We Chose Differently?

What if the tradition was experiences? A shared dinner. A day in the city. A memory instead of more stuff.

What if we supported a local business rather than a large corporation?

What if we stopped filling shelves with things that quietly turn into clutter and asked whether all this consumption is actually making us happier?

Do holidays really need to be this grand, expensive, hyper-capitalized machine?

Or can they be smaller... and better?

The Question I'm Sitting With at the end of 2025

Christmas isn't pagan or Christian.

It's:

• Pagan rituals

• Roman calendar politics

• Germanic folklore

• Medieval theology

• Victorian aesthetics

• Modern capitalism

All stacked on top of each other.

That's the question I'm sitting with this year.

Not to reject the holiday but to redefine what it means for me going forward.

And I think a lot of us are ready to do the same.

What traditions are you actually choosing? And which ones are just running on autopilot?

This is part of our ongoing conversation about recognizing propaganda in our daily lives. Not to become cynical but to become conscious.