The Ugliest Christmas Tree

The Ugliest Christmas Tree

We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children.

Romans 8:23

During one of my trips as a traveling salesman, I accepted an invitation to have dinner at a customer’s home on a December evening in 1972. After dinner their sons were putting the finishing touches on the family Christmas tree, a most peculiar specimen of greenery.

The tree looked as if it suffered from malnutrition—its trunk was as crooked as an S curve on a country road, and its top was broken. If it were not for its greenish color, the tree would have borne no resemblance at all to a pine tree. My friend informed me that his family had decided to find the ugliest tree they could and give it a home for Christmas.

What a wonderful idea! I thought. It was the stories of the Ugly Duckling, Cinderella, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer all rolled into one. This family had adopted a defective little tree and gave it love, dignity, and best of all, the honor of being their Christmas tree.

My family began our own “ugliest tree” tradition, which has now spanned more than two decades. Proudly we display our tree as a symbol of our love for all creation and a reminder that there was only one who was perfect and his birth is the reason we celebrate this most blessed time of the year.

—John Ray Greif

John’s point is well made. It also occurred to me that the broken trees represent each of us as broken human beings whom God adopted, decorated with his wonderful grace and mercy, and set in the world as lights on the path of the weary, the lonely, and the lost to show them the Way home to him.

Abba, Father, we rest in the knowledge that you have adopted us into your own family. We know we did not deserve such compassion and love, but we celebrate our honored place among your children. Amen.