Make a lenten cross with it! We started this as a family tradition a number of years ago and it’s become woven into the fabric of our holiday seasons. I love the continuity of celebrating Advent and Christmas with our Christmas tree, decorated with years of family ornaments, then using that same tree through the season of lent leading up to Easter as a reminder of the reason that we celebrate.
We spend the evenings of Advent – those where we’re not overcommitted to activities! – sitting together as a family reading one of these great advent stories. But after Christmas, the LED lights dim, the ornaments are stripped away and dry needles litter the floor. This death of our family tree foreshadows the atoning death that we observe on Good Friday.
In my tradition of contemporary evangelical protestantism, there’s a lack of emphasis on the church calendar. Personally, I think that’s regretful as the observance of traditional Christian seasons help me to tie the rhythms and flow of life to different aspects of the ministry and work of Christ. Of course, I’m not saying that Christians have to observe seasons like advent and lent, but for me, being mindful of them adds a richness to life that’s missing in our media-fueled, celebrity culture, materialistic world.
The joy and expectation of Advent gives way to the more pensive season of lent, which is traditionally observed by the Church as a season of reflection on our sinfulness, our need for repentance, the exercise of self-denial and particular focus on prayer. During Lent, our Christmas tree cross provides a vivid visual reminder to not lose sight of the whole purpose in the midst of our busy lives.
Having a cross, even a little one made out of a Christmas tree, isn’t a cute decoration or a seasonal ornament. Not anymore than having an electric chair or a guillotine displayed in the house. The cross is an instrument of torture and death and that’s how we should think of it. The beauty of the cross isn’t it’s ruggedness or it’s chunky trendy aesthetic. The cross isn’t a Pottery Barn accessory for the season.
The beauty of the cross is because it’s empty.
It’s beautiful because there’s no one hanging on it, bloody and suffocating to death. It’s beautiful because I don’t have to hang there, although like that thief two thousand years ago, I deserve it. That’s worth thinking about for a moment. Hey, I’m not that bad, I might be inclined to think. I haven’t killed anyone or robbed a bank or embezzled from a company (although there’s grace for you even if you have). At least one of those guys hanging with Jesus was a thief. Dare I even say a petty thief? For the wages of [any] sin is death.
Death’s not something we like to think much of, but perhaps we should ponder it a little. After all, it’s really the only thing that is 100% guaranteed for every one of us. It is something that we are one day closer to every day.
There are a couple things that I really love about our Christmas tree cross tradition. First of all, it’s a great visual way to connect Advent and the birth of Christ with the ultimate purpose of his incarnation which was to be the substitutionary sacrifice for my sin and the sins of the world by dying on a tree (St. Paul references Deuteronomy 21:23 when he equates Jesus’ death on the cross in Galatians 3 as being cursed in our place by hanging on a tree). By using our Christmas tree which is ever present in our home throughout Advent to become a cross during Lent and Easter, there’s a direct connection between the two seasons.
There’s also something that I find cathartic about actually creating the cross. Cutting all the dead branches off the Christmas tree is kind of a pain. It’s messy, prickly, cold January work. It brings to mind associations of Jesus the carpenter, Jesus the “righteous branch,” Jesus the atoning sacrifice.
I can’t help but reflect, as I make the cross, on the fact that it was a tree that Jesus died on and that my own sin deserves the same fate. Usually, it’s just me out there in the backyard preparing the cross. How can I not think of Jesus’ words in Luke 9, “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
When I was a kid, it was always a sad day when we took down the family Christmas tree. Looking out the window as it laid out front, vibrant green needles faded to brown and gray, waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck. It seemed like an anticlimactic end to all the Christmas cheer.
Now our trees stay with us through the cold gray days of winter, out of the way, until the promise of spring and the Easter season approaches. Then our tree comes back out to take it’s place in our home, this time reminding us of the triumphant conclusion of Christ’s earthly work and still reminding us of the advent that is yet to come.
