Christmas Trees

     There are a few things in this world  so wonderful, so mesmerizing, that you have to stop whatever you're doing and just admire the beauty. A well-made classic movie(say,"It's a Wonderful Life", "The Princess Bride" or "The Sound of Music"), a sunset, the rolling scenery of Missouri,  animals playing or sleeping or eating, the lyrics of hymns, the sound of a piano being played by an expert pianist, leaves as they change color, new-fallen snow before it gets trampled on.
     Another of these things, for me, at least, would be Christmas trees.

     Why is this? I have no idea, but I've always loved them. They're so pretty, and the shiny ornaments look so nice, the lights shine with that gentle warm glow, the little plastic bristles are green...good grief, it's hard to explain! Somehow, they're just...really peaceful.

     I guess, in a way, that they show hope. That you might get that present you were wanting, that there will be another Christmas next year, that every once in a while this crazy life we're living in can slow down and fade into the background. I used to sleep underneath the tree, actually, when I was little(Mom probably has pictures), and I could just sit and stare at it for hours, just thinking. I still can, to be honest.

     Something about the whole scene is so wonderful, so happy, yet so sad. I guess I get to thinking about what happened when Jesus came down to us in that Bethelem stable, what a marvelous mystery that is, why it would be in God's plan. But so amazing that it was - you just are dumbfounded thinking about it, the magnitude of the fact. And then knowing what coming to earth meant; the looming death in the future of the only righteous man who ever lived, in the most brutal way possible; and by His death, we received life. There isn't a better definition of love than that. (Sure, we create different definitions for the classroom or TV, but we know those are lacking, somehow.)

     And then there's your family around, knowing that you're part of a group like that, knowing your role, and that bond can grow tighter this time of year. The yummy baked treats in the kitchen filled the house with good smells and tastes, the TV commercials are simpler and more straight-to-the-point. Even though they infiltrate everything with consumerism, they're more restrained this time of year, locked into the old familiar patterns of a different generation. There's the TV specials, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, which must be quoted all through and loved to pieces. The Peanuts gang makes their trek from the comics page to the small screen, and there's so, so much good music.

     I've always had this scene inside my head, since I was little, set somewhere in the future, of myself probably in my early twenties or so, and there's this girl there with me, my wife, I guess. She's pretty. Where we live isn't much, almost "Gift of the Magi" like, but we've decorated for Christmas and now for a little while there aren't that many problems to deal with.
     Another variation of this scene, which follows nearly always after the first, picks it up about five years ahead of that, and there's little kids playing with the train and watching he tree and thinking, they're my sons.
     I don't know exactly why these pictures exist, but they do, for some reason. Sort of like our memories of dreams we've had, the especially memorable ones that we recall long after we've been  awake.

     On the morning of Friday, December 12, 2008, our house caught on fire, we were all able to get out quickly, though, and no one was hurt. The fire department put it out after about three hours, we could only watch helplessly as the flames and smoke warred with the water inside, not knowing how far it might eat into the house. That was terrifying. We were able to re-enter to get a few things about noon, I was barefoot and only had my phone in my pocket. The walls were blackened with soot everywhere, the acrid stench of scorched plastic was overwhelming. The couches were toasted, pictures blistered beyond reognition, the TV and VCR/DVD player fused together into a shapeless mass, the blinds on the windows had melted. So had our Christmas tree. There was no way the house would be livable for a while.
     So we checked into a hotel for the weekend while figuring out what to do next. Friends called from everywhere checking on us, we went to Wal-Mart to get some new clothes that weren't smoke-stained and wore those to church the next morning. We moved into my grandpa's trailer, family had fixed it all up and donated furniture and everything, that was amazing. The crowning touch, though, was the tree in the corner. It was one of those color-changing fiberoptic ones, which pretty well fit the situation, things were changing every day, it seemed. But really, it was that someone had given us a tree, that was just so amazing. The first example of many that would follow over the next year, that even though life might seem upside-down most of the time, God was still there, working things out in just the way they needed to be, and teaching and growing us into who we were supposed to become.

     When I moved in here in August, it was pretty cold. And extremely bare. I needed some decorations, something everyone kept reminding me of. I put it off for a while, because how exactly do you search for decorations? And besides, it wasn't really necessary...I just was staring at blank white cement blocks, was all. Well, in October they put up the Christmas section in Wal-Mart, so I went exploring through there one night. "Hey...decorations!!!" So I found a nice red stocking with Rudolph on it, and a desktop Christmas tree, which brightened the place up a bit, which was needed. Made it feel a little more homelike, a reminder that there are certain things that won't change, no matter where you might find yourself.

    There will always be Christmas trees, God will always be there to help us, to guide us, and we should always be praising Him for His gifts to us.