Christmas Trees #DecemberWonderings

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of decorating the school Christmas tree, a duty that the sixth form in my school are given each year. Now I’m not much of a ‘Christmas decorations’ girl myself, but since I was I had a whole day of free periods (because the one teacher I was supposed to have wasn’t in) I thought, ‘meh, might as well help.’ I’m not sure whether that was a wise decision to make on my part.

I instantly discovered that the teachers doing the Christmas tree were, as I call, Christmas decoration enthusiasts. They were all for getting that Christmas tree up early, and styling it just perfectly. I didn’t realise that this was a thing that extended further than just my little brother who insists on have a Christmas tree set up despite its impracticalities and pointlessness. It made me wonder why so many people buy into the whole ‘Christmas isn’t Christmas without the tree’ trend. It’s not that I can’t appreciate when a tree is ever so nicely decorated or that I think they shouldn’t exist. It’s just that I don’t see the reason behind them other than looking pretty. They don’t actually have anything to do with what Christmas is about. Some may say that it’s where you’re supposed to put your presents under, but I beg to differ. When we used to have the whole family Christmas thing with all my cousins and aunties, there was a corner where we placed the presents, putting them under a tree was not a thing, this was also purely because there were too many of us for all the presents to fit underneath a tree no matter the size.

Now back to the trees relevance to the season. Christmas is supposed to be the celebration of Christ’s birth, and he was born in Bethlehem, which happens to be in Middle East. The last time I checked, I’m pretty sure that fir trees don’t grow in the middle of the desert! Well apart from that, since when did a tree have any significance in the Christmas story? Shouldn’t Christmas instead of being based around how nice a tree you have, be based around that Christ came and is going to come again? Why is it that we as humans have to always have something physical to be there, the ‘represent’ what we are celebrating, can we not just get on with the celebrating of Jesus’ birth, just directly do what were are supposed to rather than doing the long thing of setting up a tree and decorations which aren’t really that important. Christmas is supposed to be more spiritual, but what happened?

I’d love to know what you think about it. Let’s have a healthy discussion in the comments below (i.e. no hating)

Ellah xx