Nardoqan or Narduğan was celebrated by Turks on December 21, the longest night of the year and the night of the winter solstice. On this night, symbolizing old sun, becomes smaller as the days become shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, and dies on December 22, the winter solstice. It is said to be defeated by the dark and evil powers. On December 23 becomes the new sun.

While some scholars trace the origins of the Christmas tree to pagan rituals in pre-Christian England, others suggest the tradition was borrowed from ancient Germanic peoples. Now, however, veteran Turkish archaeologist Muazzez Ilmiye Çığ provides a new voice to the long-standing debate: The Turks were the ones who invented the Christmas tree

The Christmas tree, a brightly adorned symbol for Christians on one of their holiest days, also represents a link to the ancient Turks of Central Asia, according to a Turkish archaeologist.

Its origins are not in Norse myth or British isle paganism, as most Western historians believe, but in the Turkic tradition of the “wish-making tree.”

Europeans, Muazzez Ilmiye Çığ argues, adopted a rite to their own holiday ritual that stems from an old Turkish custom in which people decorated a special tree to offer their thanks to God.

“People put special things under a white pine as a present to God in response to his benefaction during the year,” said Çığ, adding that the custom first arose in Turkic Central Asia. “They also tied some pieces of cloth to its boughs to make a wish for the following year.”