December Pastoral Letter

Dear Friends,

“O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches,” we Giver girls would sing joyfully as we put up our Christmas tree each year during Advent. It was always special because we had helped pick out a live tree and now as we put ornaments on it, we sang “O Christmas Tree.” Although there are other verses to the song, we couldn’t remember them and so we would just sing over and over again, “O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches.”

Memories of childhood Christmases are of decorating, opening presents, family, and singing—which were all are centered around the Christmas tree. What is it about a Christmas tree that evokes such wonder and nostalgia, joy and song?

In her book Mercy and Melons: Thanking God for All Good Gifts from A to Z, in the chapter “Evergreens and Eternal Life,” Lisa Nichols Hickman recalls the Chinese proverb “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.” Nichols writes, “This proverb of the green tree nudges me out of my discontent. Discontent is the stuff of winter and bare branches. For me, discontent usually emerges in those ‘the grass is always greener’ kind of thoughts that take me away from the gifts and the grace of the day and make me pine away for otherwise. Do you know that feeling?”

Of course, you know that feeling. I know that feeling. We have all known that feeling at one time or another or maybe more often than we dare to admit. This time of year, after the trees have lost their canopy of leaves and they stand bare against the winter winds, we may sense our own barrenness and fragility exposed and feel our discontent more deeply. But then we see an evergreen tree and wonder longingly if we too can be evergreen?

Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess, author, composer, mystic, and a medical writer and practitioner during the Middle Ages. She called the Holy Spirit the greening power of God. With this in mind, we can see how evergreen trees are filled with the Holy Spirit.

Hickman writes, “When I feel that sense of lifelessness, that sense of discontent, I can begin to pray that the Holy Spirit would pulse through my trunk, my branches, my needle-y places, my hopes for green…As I begin to coax the Holy Spirit into the barren places, I find the effervescent shade of green.”

The evergreen tree is not just evergreen in color but in spirit. It is a symbol of eternal life. We tend to think of eternal life as something that happens later—after we die. And it is something that we only talk about at funerals. Hickman challenges us, “All too often, our prayers to get ‘greener’ are rooted in what’s next, what’s coming, what’s on the horizon. We put off to eternity the joy we could have in the here and now. Something about being evergreen is finding the Holy Spirit power now, not in a hoped-for future. Once we realize that, eternal life is everywhere, ever-present and effervescent.”

Advent is a time of waiting, yes, but it is also a time for getting ready as if the one for whom we wait has already come, because he has. God’s eternal word of promise and love became flesh in Jesus, who was called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” That means, that even as we wait for Christmas, even as we watch for the light, even as we in our discontent pine for hope, even as we pray for the Holy Spirit to pulse through our branches and needle-y places, we are promised that God is with us, even here, even now, and always. May this knowing and believing make us evergreen.

I looked up the lyrics to the treasured carol of my childhood Christmas memories and found that there more verses and more meaning than I thought:

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches!

Not only green in summer’s heat, but also winter’s snow and sleet.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches!

Your bright green leaves with festive cheer, give hope and strength throughout the year.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches!

Friends, not only at Christmas, but throughout the year, if we keep a green tree in our hearts—lovely and sturdy and evergreen—perhaps even a singing bird will come and stay, and ever-present and effervescent, sing of hope and peace, joy and love, continually without ending. Evermore and evermore.

May your Christmas be bright and blessed, effervescent and evergreen,

Pastor Donna