Christmas Trees and Olive Trees

But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever. - Psalm 52:8

              Christmas trees.  I love them.  I grew up with an evergreen tree in the house every Christmas.  The smell always reminds me of the holiday season.  Scotch Pine, Douglas fir, blue spruce – it doesn’t matter.  I love going to the tree farm with the family, bringing one home, setting it up in the living room and trimming it with all the decorations we save year after year.

               I always want a “live” tree too.  No artificial ones for me.  Artificial trees are “blah”, in my opinion.  But isn’t it strange that I call our yearly decorated evergreens “live”?  They’re not actually.  We may have cut them fresh, put them in a stand and watered them so the needles won’t fall too quickly, but they’re technically not “live” anymore.  And on epiphany, the 13^th day after Christmas, our tree usually ends up out on the curb, waiting to be picked up by the borough.

              Of course, our Christmas tree ritual is a relatively recent tradition.  In fact, many American Christians considered having a decorated tree to be a pagan symbol up until the middle of the 1800s. This probably was because the Puritans considered the celebration of the holiday to be an unholy thing.[1]

              I’m not a Puritan, and I still love Christmas trees, but let’s admit one thing: Live trees make a better Christian symbol than dead ones. King David, the sweet “psalmist” described himself as a live olive tree flourishing in the house of God. He imagined this image when he reflected on the damage that Doeg the Edomite had caused by his wickedness and alignment with treacherous King Saul.[2]  David says that God will uproot people like that “from the land of the living.”

              “Uprooted trees” may be decorated and may smell nice, but they will soon lose their greenness, and they will never bear fruit.  But David sees himself as a lush, green healthy fruit-bearing olive tree in God’s house.  God’s “house” is where God is at home.  And God is at “home” not only in a building like a cathedral or a temple.  God is at home among his people who are in the world. 

David imagines blessed persons, who delight in the ways of God, to be like healthy trees planted by streams of water.[3] But trees do not survive on their own. A fruitful, healthy tree also needs other healthy trees around them who are interconnected with it.[4]  So it is with us as Christians.  We need to be connected to others in Christ’s body who are being nourished by the Source of Life. When just two or three of us meet in Jesus’ name, even in old age, in seasons of spiritual dryness or in the heat of difficulties we will continue to flourish, because the Life is there.[5] 

Lord, as much as we love evergreen Christmas trees which are beautiful today but gone tomorrow, help us to be ever green, fruit bearing “tree-persons” connected with you and each other.

[1]https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas-trees#How-Did-Christmas-Trees-Start, Accessed 12/8/2025

[2]Cf. 1 Samuel 22.

[3]Psalm 1

[4]See Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees. 

[5]Psalm 92:14. Cf. Jeremiah 17:7-8, Matt. 18:20.