Alternate Title: “How to purposefully decorate your Christmas Tree”.
subtitle: Christmas-time at our House: part 2
This is the 2nd installment in my Christmas-time at our House series. We do holiday things differently around our house. After all, it IS my house and I’m OK with being weird.
The weekend of U.S. Thanksgiving, usually on Sunday afternoon, my family has always put up the Christmas tree. Since we’re all allergic to real trees, we could make this work with our lovely fake imitation Christmas tree. (I don’t guess you can do that with a REAL tree, eh? Fire hazard and all…)
What does a Christmas tree have to do with Christmas anyway? Martha Zimmerman talks about the origin of the Christmas Tree in her book, Celebrating the Christian Year. I won’t go into detail about all the tree stuff. It basically has very little to do with Christ’s birth at all, but it has been very much a part of the Christmas tradition since Victorian times at least.
We’ve talked about it, my husband and I, and we can’t find a real good reason to get rid of the Christmas tree altogether. But we have decided to be very intentional with the decorations that we put on the tree. What is on the tree should remind us about the real reason for the season – Christ’s Birth.
“Put something where you can see it so your eye will remind your heart.” ~Hebrew Proverb
(I have probably already mentioned this proverb, and I’ll probably talk about it again in this series. It is an important principle in the things we do during the holidays. My husband even preached about icons last night with the same idea in mind.) We try not to over-spiritualize things, but we are pretty intentional about what we do use.
We decorate our tree first with Christmas lights. Actually now we have a pre-lit tree, so it already has beautiful white lights already on it. My sweetie loves the simple white lights and what they represent – The Light (i.e. Jesus) of the world come to Earth. “The Light shines in the darkness…” (John 1:5a) In the past we have also put on strings of red chili lights. They remind us of ‘home’ in New Mexico and also, more specific to the season, about the Lord’s provision for us (red chilies hung in ristras symbolize abundance as they are made out of extra chilies and set aside for use through the winter) and the blood of Christ shed for us (the color red). This year we liked our new tree so much just the way it was that we didn’t add the chilies. They’ll go up somewhere else, maybe.
My tree skirt is a quilted set that features pictures of nativity scenes. It’s very cute as well as being a reminder to us when we slide gifts under or take them out from under the tree.
As for the ornaments, we’re kind of picky about what goes on and what doesn’t. Does it have any significance in light of the Christmas story? If not, it doesn’t go on the tree (for the most part). So we put up stars, angels, nativity scenes, crosses, and the like.
- Stars remind us of God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 22:17) and of the star that guided the wise men to Jesus (Matthew 2:1-2).
- Angels, as messengers of the Lord, remind us of the message of hope and peace brought by the angels to Zechariah (Luke 1:11-20), Mary (Luke 1:26-38), and the shepherds (Luke 2:8-15). They also remind us that we have that same message of hope to bring to the world around us.
- Seeing a nativity scene in an ornament makes us think about the miracle of Jesus birth and the humility with which the Lord came into the world.
- Crosses remind us that the birth of Jesus isn’t the whole story. Jesus came and gave his life for us on the cross.
We also were given a set of Adornaments a few years ago, and each one of the 12 ornaments is a mini-book in the shape of a symbol of Christ. For example, Christ is the vine, the door, the giver of living water, etc. Christ is so much more than a baby in a manger and this set of ornaments really helps us to remember the bigger story.
At the top of our tree is a beautiful angel. Some people put stars on the top. Both practices make sense. The angel appeared to the shepherds in the sky, and the star obviously shone down from above. The angel tree-topper is the last ornament / decoration we put on the tree when we’re done with all the other ornaments.
There are a few ornaments on our tree that don’t strictly fit the classification of having something directly to do with Christ’s birth. We have the boys’ first Christmas ornaments given to us by grandparents that are little bears in a blanket or in a train. We have the ornament from our first Christmas after we were married and it’s 2 bears sitting on a heart (the heart would technically classify because it does remind us that God loved us even before we loved Him and He sent His Son to die for us). We have 2 or 3 gingerbread men because they remind us of St. Nicholas’ special gifts of spiced breads (that’s another post for later in the series). We have 1 snowman that has a picture of our oldest son from Christmas during his 2nd year of Preschool.
We have 2 Nambe ornaments that each have a turquoise stone that were given to us when we got married that remind us of ‘home’ and reflect the little white lights around them so beautifully.
We avoid snowflakes, snowmen (the above mentioned boy-in-a-snowman picture ornament excepted), rocking horses, fruit loop and popcorn garlands, gift box ornaments, bears, penguins, sleighs, Santas, nutcrackers, ballerinas, toy soldiers, etc. We would likely include horns, doves, candles, and bells (among a few others) if we had any of those kinds of ornaments – I can see how these things could remind us of Christ’s birth.
Our tree is actually very simple. It’s very kid-ish at this point with elementary-school-aged children in the house. We take the time to talk with the children about the ornaments when we put them on the tree. We read through the Adornaments(TM) mini-books several times through the season.
The same disclaimer applies here as I mentioned in my first post:
“We’re not experts, but we have been very intentional about what we do around the holidays. I am not saying that these things are suitable for every family, because we’re all different. I am also not saying that the way you do things (if what you do is different from what we’ve chosen to do) is wrong. I love how we celebrate the holidays and I thought I would share about it.”
I love our tree, and I love how we decorate it together every year. I love that every ornament I look at is another heart reminder to me and my family about why we’re celebrating Christmas anyway. No matter how you choose to do it, I strongly recommend decorating together as a family, and putting some thought into why you put the decorations on the tree. You can help convey the eternal significance of Christmas with your family by being intentional and talking about how your ornaments remind you of the bigger story of which you are a part.
click for the next in the series – What Does Santa Say about Jesus? (Christmas-time at our House: part 3)
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