The Holy Mess of a Christmas Tree

I really don’t like messy things, and I have been a “neat freak” since I was a child. In college, Sunday night I’d vacuum and dust and sweep my dorm room, my roommate would laugh as I adamantly cleaned, determined not to start our week messy. I’m a perpetual tidier and dislike having too much stuff on my counters. I love to vacuum and sweep, and feel chaotic if a space is too messy. But there’s one mess that I insist on bringing into my home, year after year, and that is a beloved Christmas tree. 

I come from a family that has two real Christmas trees, because twinkle lights and the smell of pine are important and why not bring them into as many rooms as possible? So small wonder I’m like this. In all my years in DC my roommates knew I was going to walk to the local market and begin my bartering for a tree, and then would give them a call to help haul it home. Being car-less in DC leads to creativity and relying on helpful friends who will help you carry a tree. So three years of hauling a monstrosity of a tree into our monstrosity of a house. Then two more years of a short, squat little tree taking up prime real estate in our living room, but there was a boyfriend (now my husband) with a truck to help haul the trees. 

Now in a long distance marriage for the next few months, I thought about if I even should get a tree this year. I was always determined to make sure we had a tree in the past, but I had the excuse of roommates and that multiple people would get to enjoy it. “My family has two trees, I’ll see a tree when I’m home, do I really need to get one for myself? It’s just me, is it worth the trouble of doing this by myself?” 

Yes, it was, I drove myself in the red truck, paid for the long, skinny, and last tree at Whole Foods, in the back of the truck it went, hauled up stairs, and after some wrestling with the tree stand it stood up on its own. 

The rest of the house was a mess of pine needles, my hands sticky with sap, my sweater definitely snagged from a branch, but gazing up at it, yes, it was worth it. Twinkle lights and childhood ornaments adorn the branches. I watched Charlie Brown Christmas that night, his little spindly one reminiscent of my wonky tree that had been the last of the lot. 

I can’t leave dishes in a sink overnight, and yet, year after year, I haul a tree that will drop pine needles everywhere, requires constant watering, will get prickly and dry and will eventually need to be hauled out again to make an even bigger mess. But I love it. No, I don’t love that there’s all this mess, but that feels like an important part of the process. (This is no slight on those who have fake trees, they are much easier, much less messy, more affordable) 

In Every Moment Holy, my favorite prayer book, there is a liturgy for “Setting Up a Christmas Tree.” A beautiful prayer rejoicing in the beauty and adorning of a tree for this short season. I think I’ve read it over all my trees I’ve had in adulthood. There’s something about inviting a mess into your home, some sort of sacredness to the normal sanctity of my rhythms being interrupted for a short time, perhaps that’s why the church season of advent is so important too. There’s a mysterious holiness in the scattered pine needles. 

Christ’s arrival here on earth was not a neat arrival, it was messy. It was messy when Mary was told she was pregnant and wasn’t married. It was messy when Joseph found out his wife-to-be was pregnant, and not by him. A birth in a stable was a mess I don’t really want to think about. But that’s the beauty of it all, it wasn’t a clean, crisp arrival, almost all of Christ’s life was about “messing up” the ordinary. The laws and rules of the Pharisees and scribes, their tidy, white-washed ways were called out by Christ, and he invited the mess of sinners to follow him. He invited himself into the home of Zacchaeus, making a mess of the way Zacchaeus had previously lived his life and offering him something new. 

Inviting Jesus into your life is not a tidy process, it makes things infinitely more complicated and far more messy than any Christmas tree. He will never be content to be present with you for just a season and then be on his way. He won’t take up just one room with awe and wonder. Jesus will proceed to fill and consume every corner of your being. C.S. Lewis remarked, “If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” Jesus did not arrive in the mess of our world to make us comfortable or to bring us momentary pleasure, though I know I am comforted by him always and my life has a new brightness and joy. He came to bring light to darkness, righteousness to unrighteousness, healing and heath to sin and death. 

With a Christmas tree my tidy ways are scattered with pine needles for a bit, life isn’t quite so tidy as I thought it ought to be. My Christmas tree is a holy mess, reminding me of a season, a birth, and a faith that never promised simplicity, or ease, but did promise to bring light, and so he does, and continues to.