Of a Christmas Tree and Everything Good

 

We are now into the third week of our Christmas tree, braving the low humidity of indoors in the wintry season.  It is still drinking, though about half as much as in the first days, when a gallon or so of water had to be added between morning and late evening. 

We could celebrate Christmas without a tree, but our tree is a focus of Christmas and its meaning.  Our evergreen has ever been a symbol of Jesus Christ.  The tree itself, with its conical greenery pointing upward, emphasizes life when most of the trees around are leafless. 

Those other trees are not dead, but rather filled with life.  Scripture speaks of life in deciduous trees metaphorically.  Loved ones and friends who have passed on from this life may appear to be gone.  A tree may be bare for the season.  Yet, it springs to life at a time whose chief holiday is Easter, the reminder of the resurrection of Christ, extending resurrection and newness of life to each of us when our own season of spring comes.

Upon our Christmas tree we place ornaments of many kinds.  While in great variety, the ornaments to us are all unified.  They display the reality taught in scripture:

. . . in Christ there should come every good thing . . . and all things which are good cometh of Christ” (Moroni 10:22, 24).

If you have a Christmas tree, perhaps upon yours as upon ours there will be found memories of family.  Families are divine gifts, and Christ gave us the way that our families may be united forever.

We have ornaments of fruit, whose beauty, goodness, and plethora are gifts from the Creator.  That is also true of ornaments reminiscent of wondrous places that we have been and seen.

There are charming images in other ornaments retelling stories and tales from inspired authors, among recreations in beauty of form and color.  Mixed in are images of snowflakes, of stars, of beaches, of flowers.  Jumbled about the tree are decorations testifying of birds and animals and other displays of nature well beyond human design.

Were you to gaze upon our tree, and perhaps on yours as well, you might ask, “Then what is the purpose of the ornaments of the Congress and the Senate and the White House?”  Based upon some personal experience, I would reply, they remind us of the Constitution that God inspired the Founders to give us.  From that gift we have enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a nation under God for many generations, with hopes for more generations to come.

Looking to the top of the tree, as with nearly all Christmas trees, there is a special ornament given prime position.  I helped make ours from things that someone else made, depicting an angel flying above the world with a book of scripture on one arm and with the other holding a trumpet to his lips.  It is an effort to resound Christ’s prophecy through the Apostle John to us in these latter days:

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

(Revelation 14:6,7)

With that glory represented on our Christmas tree, it is easy to look about us and see uncountable examples of good things that Jesus Christ, the Creator, has given and still gives to us.  It is His wish that we “may lay hold upon every good thing” (Moroni 7:25), and that forever.