Christmas tree #2: Phillip bought us a nice artificial tree this year. Last Christmas while we were in the USA, I ran into Meijers with my friend Susanna, and they had their Christmas decorations on sale for 75% off! WHEW! Did I ever have fun?! Since I have always had a more formal tree with white lights, clear glass balls, tull, flowers, etc. I decided to go with a kid theme this time. I bought colorful snow flakes, a snowflake topper, other colorful decorations, a pretty tree skirt with snowflakes on it, and Sis. E. gave me some pretty colorful balls to hang too. We also have snowmen on our tree. Our kids are happy to have colored lights on our tree too! We and our children are very happy, and love to lay and look at our tree. We have our tree upstairs in our room, so as not to hurt a new believer's faith...for here there are some people that have been taught that anything to do with Christmas is worldly and wrong, and that people worship Christmas trees. It is sad to us that there are MANY Christians here in Colombia that don't have anything to do with Christmas, because the Catholic church has RUINED it for them by getting drunk and just partying, and not celebrating the REAL REASON FOR THE SEASON...JESUS!~
~Our children in front of our home. 2006~
~Our home~
9 comments:
I like your Christmas tree this way-with a children's theme. Dad put up our tree this week, and it has the same theme-colorful children's items. When Phillip was a little boy & we were in Michigan, we too did not have a Christmas tree some years, so we wouldn't offend some of the people there. Our grandchildren look pretty in front of your lit up house. Smile. Merry Christmas to you guys! Love, Mom and Dad D
Your tree is very pretty and I loved seeing these pics of the front of your home - I'm not sure if I've ever seen what your home looks like on the outside before. It looks pretty with the lights.
Glad you're feeling better.
Thanks for your nice comments on my blog and for your prayers for Logan and our family.
Love,
Melodie
Your tree looks great! I always did a formal tree like you and the last two years I did a fun tree and I love it!
Love,
Grammy
Love the Charlie Brown tree!
Looks very Christmasy!! Beautiful!
Yuck! Just white lights and clear ornaments? How boring! :-)
The thing about Christmas being a worldly celebration and that sort of thing is more than just a Catholic influence. The Catholic part, at least in our experience, seems to be that our believers don't want a nativity scene because it might be considered idolatry.
Things like no Christmas tree or even no Christmas (or Easter) celebration is something that seems to be growing among our churches in recent years. At least one of my friends thinks that it's from the neo-pentecostal influence. In previous years our believers seem to have had little problem with celebrating those special days; they just needed to do it in ways that did not seem idolatrous (images like in the nativity scene) and the Christmas tree wasn't thought to be an object of worship.
The trees are so cute!
What Gorgeous Trees! ;-) I can sympathize. I remember the days in PNG that we "tried" to have a Tree. One year we had an ugly black plant holder tree, we took the plants off & tied evergreen branches over the "branches. It Looked TERRIBLE! I think it was worse than no tree at all, but hey we won't ever forget that Christmas! Your trees turned out much prettier! :-)
I love your trees. The kids look so cute in front of your house. Thanks for sharing.
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