Putting up "the Tree" has long been an infallible sign that Christmas is coming closer. When I was but a boy in the Bronx in the 1950s, my parents used to purchase a Christmas Tree, usually from a local neighborhood vendor, a few days before the holiday and then left it out in the cold on the fire escape outside my bedroom window until it was time to decorate it. Typically, that would happen on Christmas Eve or maybe a day or two before. Over the years, the almost universal tendency everywhere - not just in stores and commercial settings but also in homes and even in churches - has been to set up and decorate Christmas Trees earlier and earlier. The lamentable but widespread practice of using an artificial "Tree," which obviously avoids the problem of how to keep it from drying out too much indoors, has contributed to this ever earlier decorating. Nowadays, some homes even put up their Christmas Tree as early as Thanksgiving, thus imitating commercial establishments for which the Christmas Tree is less a symbol of the Savior's birth than an invitation to endless Christmas shopping.
Whenever the Tree appears, however, it is invariably a sign of joy and a symbol of hope. Something special happens to a room when the Christmas Tree is put in its place and lights begin to appear on its branches. Against the cold gloom of a December afternoon and the sheer blackness of a long winter night, the Christmas Tree stands as the silent but bright reminder of what the Gospel for Christmas Day proclaims: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world (John 1:9).
Although some earlier forms of tree decorations existed, such as the medieval "Paradise Tree" adorned with apples for mystery plays, popular legend attributes our modern Christmas Tree to 16th-century Germany and in particular to Martin Luther. How accurate the legend about Martin Luther and the domestication of the Christmas Tree actually is probably cannot be resolved. That said, it still speaks powerfully to what the Christmas Tree signifies.
According to the legend, Luther, walking through a forest one winter night, was struck by the sight of a fir tree sparkling in the starlight. Thus inspired, he cut down one small fir tree and brought it indoors, replicating the light of the stars with the light of candles on the tree's branches, thus making the illuminated fir tree into a symbol of the light of Christ coming into the world. Christmas is indeed the ultimate winter light festival, and the Christmas Tree is the most common domestic expression of this symbolism.
Along with millions of others all over the world this week and next, we are decorating our Christmas Tree. These are not the best of times. Yet Christmas comes faithfully in good times and bad to lift up our depleted spirits just as it lifts up our gaze to its evergreen branches and bright and beautiful lights. Face-to-face with Christmas, we are enabled to get beyond our anger against one another and our justified anxieties about our future and once again feel loved and look forward with hope.
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