decorating the tree!

Today, my mother, Nana, Grampy, Jacque, Elli, Nathaniel and I all went down to the temple to decorate the Christmas tree for Seneca Stake. We have been excited about it for weeks.

Nathaniel enjoyed sitting with Grampy:



And the rest of us decorated. The tree was clearly tall:



We started at the top of the tree and worked our way down. The top of the tree represents Heaven and it's all glitzy and covered in stars and balls and angels and ribbon. The ribbons represent how we are all tied together as children of God, and how we are all tied to Heaven. The balls represent the planets, that God created along with the stars. Down at the bottom of the tree, the poinsettas are symbolic of the Christ and the fruit boughs are symbolic of the fruits of the Spirit.



Baby fell asleep in the sling:



We had the tree closest to the Christus--prime real estate for the awesomest tree in the Visitor's Center. This is Nana and me, putting lights up around the creche in the center of the tree:



Babies slept. People decorated. Ladders were everywhere.



In the end, the tree looked pretty good (if I do say so myself).



Our tree's ornaments are ones we made ourselves, from creches bought in the Czech Republic. The creche pieces are very small, but we blew the images up and then added beads and sequins. The creche we used is of all the native Czechs bringing presents to the baby Jesus. Here are some of my favorites. Below you can see the artist's self-portrait (he's the one with the art, duh. we actually had to Photoshop the pipe he was smoking out of the picture), a tailor bringing a jacket, a shepherd bringing a lamb, and a musician playing his horn:



Here is the creche, the wise men, some animals and children coming to view the baby:



A band of musicians (I love the cellist) and a baker bringing a birthday cake:




The city of Bethlehem:



The geniuses behind it all:




The tree took 30 manhours to decorate, not counting the many many hours spent hand-creating each individual ornament.

This time, for the first time, decorating the tree was very spiritual for me. I kept looking at the pictures of the people taking things to Christ: the birthday cake, the jacket, music, bread, horses, chickens, piglets, toys. What could I bring Him?

All He asks is a broken heart and a contrite spirit. That's the best gift anyone can bring to Jesus Christ.

But in the meantime, the gifts portrayed on our tree are pretty cool.