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It's 20 years today since I was last in Lithuania. This is one of the treasured objects I brought back - Rūpintojėlis (the pensive Christ), a distinctively Lithuanian portrayal of Jesus' passion which (you won't be surprised to learn) has partly pagan origins
While the popularity of Rūpintojėlis himself seems to be a c19th phenomenon - and a symbol of Lithuania's suffering under successive occupations - the pole-like form of the carving is a pagan legacy
Like many other peoples of Iron Age Europe (including Iron Age Britain), the Lithuanians worshipped in sacred groves, but when groves were unavailable they created pole-like images of deities that may have functioned as 'artificial trees'
(Except, of course, the Lithuanians carried on doing this for a millennium or so longer than most other European Iron Age peoples)
Even today, the Lithuanian word for a carver of traditional pole-like images of Christ and the saints is 'dievdirbys', 'god-maker', while the statues themselves are sometimes called 'dievukai' ('little gods'). The religion has changed, but the language hasn't