Over the years I have shot many photos to use as reference for paintings. In search for one particular photos recently, I came across another I had forgotten about. It was a snow scene I shot one winter here in Texas. I always loved the photo but had never created a painting based on it. So, I decided to remedy that issue and painted the work below titled “Let It Snow”.
In this part of Texas our evergreen trees are very limited. No spruce, no firs. You can’t go out and cut a native “Christmas Tree”, unless it’s a cedar. And they are not the best evergreens to use for that purpose. The tree in the foreground of this painting is a cedar. During the time I was working on this painting, I was reminded of another tree from the past.
It must have been about 1970. It was a cold day in north Georgia and Christmas was approaching rather quickly. My family and I had traveled to Lafayette, Georgia to visit my grandpa on my dad’s side of the family. I remember the warm house, (usually too warm), the various smells of breakfast that lingered, and the linoleum floor and Naugahyde couch and chair. Like many of our grandparents’ houses, it had it’s unique ambiance and well-worn sense of place.
One of the first things I noticed was that there was no Christmas Tree. My “Grandpa Miller” was not known for embracing the “warm and fuzzy” things of Christmas. I think he loved Christmas as well as anyone; He just didn’t spend time making things look like Christmas. Maybe because they had come through the depression and life had simply not been an easy road, but sparse and lean, visually speaking, seemed as good to him as lavish and well decorated.
I’m not really sure how the Christmas decoration responsibilities were assigned, but I do believe it was my Grandpa’s lot to take care of the tree. His choice of trees was something you had to see. They were usually something he cut down after a five-minute search in the woods that surrounded his house. It might be a four-foot, ratty looking cedar tree or a very small pine tree that looked like a limb cut from a larger tree. Some of grandpa’s Christmas trees would have made the notorious “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree look rather luxurious. But as I mentioned, this Christmas season the living room lacked even the poorest of trees.
Since I was looking for an escape from the boredom of the household goings on, and to escape the accumulating heat in the house that was only going to get worse, I assigned myself the task of heading out into the country side to find and cut a tree. In my mind, my tree would be an awesome upgrade from the sad tree’s grandpa was gifted at finding and incorporating into the Christmas celebrations.
Armed with Grandpa’s bow saw, I set out on the quest. The first leg of the journey was to go down the hill towards my Uncle Red’s old homestead, which was about a quarter mile or so from my Grandpa’s house. I think I was told to look for a tree on Uncle Red’s land and not cut someone else’s tree. An act of treachery I had been guilty of in the past. Problem was I was not a surveyor at the age of 12 or so, and I found no obvious boundaries for Uncle Red’s land. I figured if I could see it and walk on it, it must be his.
Having roamed around the creek bottoms (Uncle Red’s land backed up to a wide creek where we would swim in the summer) and finding nothing I deemed good enough to replace my Grandpa’s Charlie Brown tree, I walked on down the road to a bridge, which was the only place to cross the creek. After crossing the bridge, I walked the eighth mile or so back towards Red’s house, but now I was on the opposite side of the creek and Uncle Red’s house, and of course the road back to Grandpa’s house. But when you are 12, logistics mean nothing. After wandering around a bit, I finally laid my eyes on “the Tree”. Even though it was not the optimum species of trees that make it to the Christmas tree farms and sold in the various cities and towns, it was in my opinion the best shaped cedar tree I had ever seen. I imagined it in Grandpa’s living room all decorated and emitting the awesome Christmas ambiance that was missing.
With all these warm and fuzzy thoughts bouncing around in my head, I proceeded with my self-imposed mission. I used the bow saw and cut the tree. Once cut, reality and the before missing logistics begin so nudge its way into my overly optimistic brain. I now realized that I had some walking to do to get my “perfect” tree back down to the bridge, across the creek and up the hill to the barren living room. Compromise means to settle a dispute my making a concession between the two opposing sides. This was the first compromise I had to make to get the tree back to Grandpa’s house. To avoid walking all the way back down the field to the bridge and then back up to Uncle Red’s house, which was still a good quarter mile from the top of the hill where Grandpa’s house was, I decided to cross the creek at a shallow place below Uncle Red’s house. The “Crossing” was a shallow place that allowed folks would drive their cars right down into the creek and wash their cars in the warm days of summer. It was now a few days before Christmas in north Georgia and the temperature was a bit on the cold side. But I had to cross, had to get the “perfect” tree back up the hill and restore Christmas to Grandpa’s house. I removed my shoes and socks, and with saw, shoes and socks in tow, I dragged the tree across the creek and up the bank on the other side, saving a lot of backtracking to the bridge. Once I put my socks and shoes back on my now freezing feet, I started up the last leg of the trip, dragging the perfect tree on the rough asphalt back up the quarter mile hill to it’s final destination.
Even though gravity was a very helpful friend when I started this odyssey from the top of the hill, it was now a foe, and a very unkind one at that. In fact it was very malicious to a 12-year-old dragging the perfect tree back up the hill to be enjoyed by all. The other thing about gravity is that it is quick to betray folks who are gullible. A couple of hours earlier It had lured me down the hill in complete ease. Now it offered only growing resistance as I made my way back up the hill. It added unexpected weight to my perfect tree with each step.
Being a bit hard-headed, I stuck with it and finally arrived at the treeless house in the wood on top of the hill. I could imagine the chorus of praise as all the inhabitants of the house laid eyes on my perfect tree. The younger inhabitants of that treeless house were no doubt elated to see a Christmas tree and excited to decorate it, as well as bask in the Christmas season with a perfect Christmas tree. But the older ones, those who could reason, which is to say that “it was not their first rodeo”, just stood and looked at my perfect tree with some unexpected expressions on their faces. Then came the words. I can’t remember the words exactly, but they bounced around in my head being edited by reality and mixed with expectation. “Your perfect tree will not fit through the door of the house, and if it would fit through the door, we don’t have a 15-foot ceiling…What were you thinking?”
That awesome “perfect” tree, sitting in the rural country side under the north Georgia sky, didn’t look all that big. I mean really, what was a 12-year-old to compare it to? My perfect tree was dwarfed under the winter sky, sitting in a large field boarded by 100-foot-tall popular and pine trees. My problem was that I lacked some information and my perspective was off. Even though I was trying to help, with the right motives, I wasn’t seeing this situation correctly and my judgement was way off.
This mis-judgement was easily remedied. The experienced folks stepped in an offered one simple solution – cut the tree in HALF. Yes, half. That’s how far off my judgement was. So the top half of the “perfect tree” made it onto the living room of the treeless house and all was well this Christmas season.
And truth is, our entire lives can be spent dragging our “perfect Christmas tree” up a hill, only to find out when we stand before a holy God that it was all mis-guided. Our perspective was off. We lacked information we really needed. We need “truth”. We need guidance and logistics.
This is the reason why I love Christmas. God the Son stepped into our time-space universe with truth, with redemption, offering new life in Himself. The Bible says “So the Word became human and made His home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen His glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.” John 1:14
Don’t forget that Christmas only began in the manger. It was finished at the cross. This is Christmas. Our lives are full of what the Bible calls “falling short of His glory”. The abbreviated version of this “falling short of His glory” is captured in the word sin. Christ carried a tree up a hill in Jerusalem, died and was raised from that grave in order to set free those who believe and trust Him. “But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
This Christmas may your perspective be grounded in the reality of the incarnation and the cross.
