The only thing I don’t like about the modern Christmas tree custom is paying a lot of money for the tree. If it weren’t for that, I’d want one in every room of the house. One time I did have two trees; I put a tiny one that my sister sent me in the kitchen and hung only bird and pine cone ornaments on it.

What follows about Christmas trees in Orthodox tradition comes from the St. Tikhon’s Seminary bulletin, I understand, but I read it on Svetlana’s blog. I added paragraphs to make it more readable online. The theology in this short article demonstrates how in Orthodox thinking and practice everything is related to everything else in God’s creation. Thank you, God, for Christmas trees!

“I suspect that the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas time is not simply a custom which came to us from the West and which we should replace with other more Orthodox customs. To be sure, I have not gone into the history of the Christmas tree and where it originated, but I think that it is connected with the Christmas feast and its true meaning.

“First, it is not unrelated to the prophecy of the Prophet Isaiah: ‘There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots’ (Is. 11:1). St. Cosmas the poet had this prophecy in mind when he wrote of Christ as the blossom which rose up out of the Virgin stem from the stump of Jesse. The root is Jesse, David’s father, the rod is King David, the flower which came from the root and the rod is Theotokos. And the fruit which came forth from the flower of the Panagia is Christ. Holy Scripture presents this wonderfully.

“Thus the Christmas tree can remind us of the genealogical tree of Christ as Man, the love of God, but also the successive purifications of the Forefathers of Christ. At the top is the star which is the God-Man (Theanthropos) Christ. Then, the Christmas tree reminds us of the tree of knowledge as well as the tree of life, but especially the latter. It underlines clearly the truth that Christ is the tree of life and that we cannot live or fulfill the purpose of our existence unless we taste of this tree, ‘the producer of life’.

“Christmas cannot be conceived without Holy Communion. And of course as for Holy Communion it is not possible to partake of deification in Christ without having conquered the devil, when we found ourselves faced with temptation relative to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where our freedom is tried. We rejoice and celebrate, because ‘the tree of life blossomed from the Virgin in the cave.’”

Excerpt from: “The Feasts of the Lord: An Introduction to the 12 Feasts and Orthodox Christology” by Metropolitan of Nafpatkos Hierotheos Vlachos – November 1993
.  Illustration by Carl Larsson

(Reposted from 2010)