Once again, ... christians didn't use Christmas trees for 15 centuries after the establishment of Christianity. and that usage began in Christian Germany. There is no connections between ancient pagan customs and the present day use of christmas trees. There's at least a millenium-long GAP between the two.
So, my assumption that it was an evergreen tree is wrong. Pagans DID cut down trees (sometimes they'd leave them be) But generally, back in Rome, they didn't cut them down, they used shrubs and would decorate them.
"In Europe, Pagans in the past did not cut down whole evergreen trees, bring them into their homes and decorate them. That would have been far too destructive of nature. But during the Roman celebration of the feast of Saturnalia, Pagans did decorate their houses with clippings of evergreen shrubs. They also decorated living trees with bits of metal and replicas of their God, Bacchus.
Tertullian (circa 160 - 230
CE), an early Christian leader and a prolific writer, complained that too many fellow-Christians had copied the Pagan practice of adorning their houses with lamps and with wreathes of laurel at Christmas time."
The modern-day Christmas tree,
although other civilizations have used them in connection with the sun-god,
the god saturnalia is for, the 1600 use of a christmas tree, wasn't about that.
Same tree that other civilizations (the vikings for example) used to represent the sun god,
and the origin is for the same feast in worship of the sun god (saturnalia), and
the romans that first combined the two while they did use evergreens, it wasn't the full tree. I only assumed, so my bad. Still, too many similarities regarding the sun god for me to keep up with that tradition. Especially since God Himself said in Jeremiah 10:2
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
He didn't specifically say evergreen, but nonetheless, he also didn't say evergreens were cool to use. The point still remains that pagans still worshipped with whole trees. They would also cut and manipulate the trees, but in worship to the sun god, or Asherah, and other gods they would worship whole trees, again, they'd also cut them, but whole trees were worshipped. So yeah, I incorrectly assumed they cut down the whole tree back in Rome. They used evergreen trees in some occasions, but only shrubs, or trimmings and clippings from the evergreen trees were used to represent the sun god. Other civilizations still used the evergreen tree to worship the sun god though, and the festival that became christmas was based on and dedicated to, primarily the sun god of the pagans, so, we can agree to disagree, but I don't find it a good thing to worship with something having that many connections to paganism. Same tree, same god, same traditions, despite God telling us not to do that which we do, just because He didn't specifically say the tree of evergreen is bad, He also didn't say it was good, and could be cut down and decorated in our homes as the heathens did. Same festival, with our God's name on it, idk. If you're cool with it, be cool with it, I'm just pointing out these things that turned me off of it.