O, Christmas Tree
Merchants are not the only ones who begin decorating in October. When I visited the Biltmore House and Estate in Asheville, North Carolina on October 19, Christmas trees had been decorated and set in nearly every public room of the 250 room mansion built in 1895.
Model of the house inside the massive green house.
Traditions around the evergreen tree and branches date back centuries to the Egyptians but became popular during the reign of England’s Queen Victoria who married Prince Albert from Germany. In the 1500s, Germany began bringing evergreen trees into homes at Christmas (“O Tannenbaum”) and in the 1800s, the decorated tree tradition made its way across the ocean to America.
Here's a link to the website where you can read about the the Biltmore Banquet Hall Tree, a Christmas tradition. This year's massive tree was not in place during my visit.
Here’s what the banquet hall looked like before workers set up the Christmas tree.
This largest room in the house measures 72 feet long by 42 feet wide, 70-foot high ceiling, the table seats from 2 to 32.
These last days before Christmas . . .
Every year at Christmas, the tree holds lots of memories. Special ornaments bring reminders of those who gave me many of these tiny treasures, and it’s my pleasure to handle them and remember those people.
It’s the song, however, that plays in my head: “O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, how lovely are thy branches . . .”
I don’t get much further than the first few lines before my eyes fill with tears and my nose runs.
Not the Best Christmas Pageant, but the Last Christmas Pageant for my 7-year-old sister, Renée, who died four days after that worst Christmas ever for my family and me.
But then I recall that singular Christmas program in elementary school days before she left us and that memory makes me smile.
Renée rocked it. O Christmas Tree, swaying and singing with so much pure joy, she performed as if she was designated the soloist. Not an ounce of self-consciousness in her bones.
People couldn’t help but watch her. As I looked around, my mom and I weren't the only ones smiling back at her.
Her hair shone like a backlit halo––fine, blonde, soft and curly like a toddler's.
Renée was a head taller than everyone in her kindergarten class because she had been held back a year. Too many absences to promote.
Goodness, how I wish I had a picture of her that night. Imagine a video!
But then I think how it’s impossible for cameras or portraits to offer more than a likeness.
The best picture or portrait ever made cannot recapture the feelings that surround people we love.
Evergreen trees represent life and hope.
Bokeh in the background, that soft pleasing out of focus effect, shows how the light that is Jesus shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. [1]
Trees in rooms at the Biltmore House have exquisite decorations.
Loves, Losses, and Life Everlasting
We all resist change. And yet even if we admit change is inevitable, we are afraid for things to change.
The world is ever-changing
And you are changing, too.
And with change comes forward movement
That declares:
You have not missed out on what was meant for you.
––Morgan Harper Nichols
That last line challenges my thinking and reminds me to be both grateful and content with the gifts God gives to me.
Way, way back when my husband and I lived in Charlotte, NC for four years, we never got to visit the Biltmore House. On our trip all these years later, I could not have imagined that the house would be filled with Christmas trees in October. What a beautiful gift!
When someone in your immediate family dies, or willingly departs the family circle, a part of you seeks to imagine what your life would have been like without that loss.
Yes, I have changed. The world around me has changed too. Forward movement.
More than any other defining moment in my childhood, my sister's death occurring days after her seventh birthday changed how I experience Christmas and how even now the song O, Christmas Tree evokes the tenderest memories of her. She called me, “My Carol.”
Renée would have been amazed by all the trees at the Biltmore House. She would have loved to keep singing. She would have changed the course of my life and so many others. Especially our mom.
As a Christian, in the hands of the Sovereign LORD, it comforts me to believe and to trust that Renée lived her full life among us. She didn’t miss anything that was meant for her. Her circle was complete.
I must remind myself that I have not missed anything meant for me.
What’s just as remarkable, I have been spared innumerable things not meant for me.
“My times are in your hands” Psalm 31:15
