Making the connection – Christmas to Easter

As I shared at Christmas we always make a point to connect the birth of Christ and that celebration to His ultimate purpose – His death & resurrection. At Christmas the first ornament we put on the tree is a nail to remind us of this, as well as reading “The Tale of Three Trees”. (You can read about that here)

One of the Christmas decorations we leave up through Good Friday in our in our home is a wonderful stamped series of pictures. (created for us on our 15th anniversary by our dear life long friend – Rachel Fichtner)

As you can see it is a Christmas tree that is slowly losing all its decorations and branches until it is completely dead.  The final picture has the tree looking like a cross and the words on it say – “When all the glitter is gone…only one truth still remains.”

This year we got a new Christmas item that we left displayed in our kitchen.  It is a beautiful red platter that my little sis – Cynthia gave us that says” “May the spirit of Christmas be forever in your heart” I served the hot cross buns on that platter yesterday. (A new tradition and connection is begun!)

Another very neat thing that we do is to take our Christmas tree at the end of that season (After Epiphany on January 6) and my dear darling hubby strips of the branches and makes the trunk into a cross.  For many years we used it as the center of our backyard Easter sunrise service that we held. (For the last nine years we have attended our awesome city wide service down by the waterfront that includes dozens of churches coming together to celebrate!) Now we simply have it in our backyard as a year long reminder of the cross and its power. Perhaps I will decorate it with flowers tomorrow since the weather report is saying it will be warm enough to have our Easter brunch outside!