How’s Your Christmas Tree?

It’s December and I suppose your Christmas tree is already up and trimmed. Did you help make the trimmings? How does it look? Is it different from your tree last year?

So many questions, huh? I can’t help it. I get all excited when it comes to Christmas trees.

Every year, I try to make my tree look different from last year’s tree. I spend a lot of time choosing from so many different trimming ideas.

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This year, an artist friend suggested ice cream in cones. Yes, ice cream! She sent me varied photos of ice-cream décor and they all looked great. I settled on the design that was easiest to make.

I bought all the materials from different stores and with paste and scissors, I got busy making all my trimmings. If you’re wondering why I keep calling our Christmas tree my tree (as though I solely owned it), well, let me explain: All my children are boys and if it were up to them, they wouldn’t bother making Christmas trimmings.

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And so I sat down to make my ice cream for my tree with the help of our househelps (girls). We made over 60 ice cream cones for three weekends. They look so real, they can make you drool. 

I am not alone in this madness.

If you surf the Net, you will find gazillions of Christmas tree photos. People all over the world who celebrate Christmas are always creating richly and beautifully trimmed trees. 

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In the Philippines, there are very few houses that don’t have a Christmas tree as early as November. About this time, too, buildings, malls, streets are teeming with Christmas trees and other décor.

* * *Amidst all the excitement over what and how to trim my Christmas tree, however, a friend of mine chided me, “Grace, it’s okay to be excited over a Christmas tree and all the other things that make Christmas festive—gifts, lights, parties, food, reunions—but please don’t forget the REASON why we are all doing these things!”

Her remark made me pause and think.

Yeah, all the things we get busy on to keep the Christmas “spirit” alive take us away from the real meaning of Christmas.

She added, “The first Christmas was not festive at all. Our Lord and Savior was born in a lowly manger. The only light He had was from the moon and stars. And his first visitors were poor shepherds.”

* * *I looked closely at my ice cream cones. And I wondered, what on earth do they have to do with Christmas?

Nothing really.

Except that Christmas is a time to celebrate the greatest birthday on earth. Ice cream is served at birthday parties and so maybe, just maybe, the person who first invented the ice cream Christmas tree trimmings thought of it that way.

As I ponder my yummy tree with all the ice cream hanging from it, I think of the Holy Birth. My Christmas tree is simply a symbol of celebration and yet, it already makes me happy.

The real Christmas—when God was born on earth, became man to save sinful people from their sins, and to show love and humility we have never seen before —should make me even happier, so much happier. 

* * *Enjoy your Christmas tree! But please remember the REASON why you put it up in the first place. Come visit my website: http://leavesofgrace.blogspot.com or email me at: [email protected]