You can download this Christmas tree on MyMiniFactory: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/52978
If you’re fast, you might even be able to print it before Christmas.
I’m all for magnifying Christ in Christmas.
I’m a smart dude. I know that Christmas started as the Pagan winter solstice celebration, aka Yule or Yuletide. I know that that some Catholic missionaries in order to boost their conversion numbers Christianized it, and the way they chose to kind of lacked reason. But as inaccuracies go, one that encourages people to be kinder, more generous, and more loving towards each other, to take time off and get together with those we love, there’s a lot of good coming from this inaccuracy.
See, we don’t know when Jesus was born exactly. This momentous event that would literally change the course of history, and we have only vague ideas of when it actually happened. So it seemed fair for these Catholic missionaries to say “You guys got this winter celebration thing with the trees and the wreathes? That’s cool. Keep doing what you’re doing, just put a little Jesus in it” and to pick the one thing that we needed to celebrate, but didn’t know when to. Reasonable. Only, many historians and scripturians have pointed out while we don’t know when the holy birth actually happened, we can be reasonably sure it wasn’t in December. Every Christmas carol we sing about the holy night of Christ’s birth, angels on high, and stars in the sky of a silent nights, are way off the calendar.
The cynic in me says that this is a pretty compelling reason to take Christ out of Christmas. It’s not accurate, we know that, so why do we persist in the celebration? Should we halt the celebration of Christ’s birth entirely because of this? Unacceptable. Maybe we should separate Christmas and Yuletide and move Christmas to a more accurate date. But which parts to we move and which parts stay? Jesus has been woven into the trees and wreaths and all the parts of the season that come from the Yuletide, not to mention centuries of Christian influenced tradition, like Santa, candy canes, and presents, that aren’t directly related to Christ. Personally, I would not want to be on that committee. And when do we have this new Christmas celebration? September seems a good guess, but there’s arguments for March and April that people are vehemently attached to as well. Unless Jesus’s birth papers are found or someone invents a science based time-scry that can give us a completely accurate view of any point in history so we can mark the right day on our calendar, we’re never going to know for sure. (And that time-scry is going to cause a whole mess of problems for a lot of people.)
We live in an inaccurate and inefficient world. I say let’s not kick this particular inaccuracy for now. Leave Christ in Christmas and even magnify him whenever we can as Savior, Lord, Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Let’s save our attempts to change the world for things that will actually make a difference like changing every speed limit sign in the US to kph so we can finally go metric in America. Now that’s a cause I’m willing to get behind.
This project is one that I’m excited and concerned to bring to you. Excited because it was a lot of work to get it to this point and I want everyone to see it. Concerned because it’s not perfect and I just haven’t taken the time to fix it, test print it, take pictures, and upload it. Not to mention the video series I want to make. I tried this year, I really did, but in the end the best I could do is what is before you. And to be fair, it’s pretty good. This really is a beautiful tree and some gorgeous ornaments, each one a work of art itself. I already have had reason to take individual elements I made here and remix them for other projects. Taken as a whole, this is something I’m very proud of. I hope you’ll check it out.
