Make Your Church Christmas Tree tell The Bethlehem Story as A NATIVITY TREE

End of the Summer holidays for many and the shops and garden centres are ramping up their Christmas displays, so here’s a further encouragement to churches to think about one of their seasonal focal points.

Throughout 2023, I was encouraging churches to decorate their Christmas Trees in such a way that they became part of the Christmas story; thus changing them from a near-secular emblem at the front (usually) of the church into a rich symbol of the story from when the angel host hovered over Bethlehem and invited the edge-of-society Shepherds to be the first people to witness the coming of the Saviour of the World, the Messiah.

However, as 2023/24 passed, and our companion site (a less faith-based site than this), has developed the ideas of CLIMERICKS and CLIMCUBES, (see http://eco-verses.blogspot.com/), these two potent symbols of Climate change, Climate Justice and servanthood, offer a further opportunity to turn a Christmas Tree into an even more graphic symbol.

To make this shift complete, the ecological symbols also need the help of some of those lovely Palestinian Olive-wood tree hangings. I hope you are beginning to get the picture.

That picture is, overall, almost breathtaking in its simplicity and explicit messages. Just Look!

FROM THE TOP - where, in all probability there is already an angel, add, to just-above-eye-level, your community's LOCAL ANGEL THRONG as follows:

As there is still time, ask local craftspeople to make angels to hang on the church tree, in their own medium. You will then have a beautifully diverse fellowship of angels for the tree AND an opportunity to invite the crafters in for their own pre-Christmas celebration and dedication of their work hanging in the church, which at its best is the beating heart of any community.

FROM EYE LEVEL to about 1metre off the ground, put Palestinian Olive wood tree hangings, thus vividly recalling the very land where Christ was born 

BOTTOM QUARTER OF TREE - hang CLIMERICKS speaking of our responsibility  for Climate Justice and Stewardship. You will find lots of these little verses at  http://eco-verses.blogspot.com/

AROUND THE TREE - CLIMCUBES (See the same Eco-verses site) to be given away at maybe an Epiphany service - symbolic of our sending Christ’s message of stewardship, and love for our planet, where he lived, further into our communities.

So the prettified church Christmas Tree (not the tree in your home - those are often part of family history)  becomes a NATIVITY TREE - a  multi-faceted symbol of HOPE and OUTREACH: a glorious transformation.

Please pass this idea on far and wide if you think it has merit