The Christmas tree is a tradition older than Christmas
The author of the article is a professor of history at Texas A&M University. The article is clearly not written for a scholarly audience, but it makes all kinds of sweeping generalizations without no visible means of support. It's a lark, but it's also a lot of crap. Lots of hand-waving and appeals to "ancient peoples" which is both lousy history and piss poor anthropology. Besides evergreens are not a universal of European history, so the discussions of them should be limited to certain regions and cultures and times, not generally spread around like butter on toast.
There is no definitive history of the Christmas tree, but the better explanations come from the history of the Paradeisbaum and German medieval morality plays, which don't even get a mention in that article. I could even challenge the idea the tree became popular in America because of Queen Victoria. Well, read the second link to see what I mean. The Xmas tree in America has a great deal more to do with the 20th century than the 19th, and was far more popular as a decorative item (where it was popular, until it became ubiquitous) among the upper classes who could afford the elaborate indoor settings for the trees (they were treated more like trees than like the artificial and aluminum ones we all know now, which are barely regarded as trees at all. And the two in my house are only 'trees' because they're made of wood. The Xmas tree is far more conceptual than forest, nowadays).
Merry Christmas, y'all!
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