The Christmas Tree

For almost as long as I can remember, my family has had a manger instead of a Christmas tree during the Christmas season. Me and my siblings have always complained about this, because we like having a Christmas tree. Of course, my mom hates it because my brothers always fight over who gets to put what decoration on the tree, and we never have enough money to buy a real tree.

I've never had a chance to tell my mom, but there are reasons that I feel a Christmas tree should always be part of the decorations around the house. For one, the sweet smell of pine reminds me of the Christmas season. It's not Christmas, until I can smell a pine tree inside. But here are the real reasons.

1. The Christmas tree itself. It's an evergreen. I don't know what other people think that means, but to me the evergreen represents immortality, which is part of the reason that Jesus was born on Earth for, to grant mankind immortality, and give all people a chance to obtain eternal life. So right off the bat, the tree represents something important to the Christmas holiday.

2. The twinkle lights. This had a double meaning to me. First, each individual light is the light of Christ that everyone has inside them, that prompts people to do the right thing. And second, when it's dark outside, the overhead light is off, and all you can see is the tree light up by all the little lights, the lights combine into a larger glow, which to me represents Christ himself, because he is the Light of the World, pushing back the darkness and shining for all to see.

3. The decorations. I don't know about other families, but the decorations we use (when we actually have a tree) are all ornaments that my mother has collected over the years, each one with a special memory attached to it. So the decorations represent memories, usually of family and friends. And Christmas is a holiday of reflecting, on both Jesus' birth as well as the good things we remember in our own past.

4. The angel tree topper. We put an angel on our temples, why shouldn't we put angels on top of our Christmas tree during the holiday that celebrates the birth of him whose name we take upon ourselves? It might not look like the same angel, but when we put that angel topper on our tree, we are essentially saying 'this tree is a holy symbol of our discipleship of Christ, just like the temple is'.

Now, I may be romanticizing the symbolism of the tree and decorations. They may not have any real meaning, and may just be relics of what Christmas used to be when it was a pagan holiday. But these are what I think of when I think of a Christmas Tree.