This is our Yule fire in order to summon Llew / Lugh / Lugos, the Sun God, back after the darkest days around Alban Arthan, the Winter Solstice. It's also a good way to get rid of cardboard, junk mail, and beehives that were infested with hive beetles. Photo by Shadow Beebe

(There are always debates around this time of year about the Yule Tree aka Christmas Tree aka Holiday Tree.
Q: Does it hurt the environment to cut down a fresh tree?
A: Not really. In Michigan, there is a whole agricultural industry built around trees as a cash crop. Evergreens are grown on farms for five - 15 years, then harvested. It's no different than growing corn, then cutting it down. In the meantime the trees provide shelter for wildlife and oxygen for our biosphere. After the holiday, those trees are mulched or fed to goats.
Q: Did the Christmas Tree come from Pagan tradition?
A: Yes and no. Garlanding with greenery is an older pre-Christian custom from the British Isles, as is decorating a tree outdoors. However, it was not always done around Yuletide -- the Beltane and MidSummer holidays also had tree adornment rites -- and it was not always evergreens which were decorated. (See my articles about Clootie Trees and Wishing Trees.) The actual Christmas Tree came from Teutonic lands, where an evergreen was brought indoors, sometimes hung upside down from the rafters, and adorned with trinkets, paper cutouts, beads, and yes -- highly flammable candles. Kids, do not do this at home.
Q: Did the Yule tree serve any other religious purposes?
A: YES! The trees or decorated greens represented springtime and the candles or lights symbolized light during the darkest days of winter. Afterward, Yule trees were stripped of their branches, and the base was sometimes used as a May pole, and then kept for a year to be next year's Yule log. 
      As you can see from the above photo, we take our Yule Tree outdoors and cover it with popcorn, apples, carrots, field corn, peanut butter & birdseed covered pinecones, and use it as a feeding station for birds & native wildlife.