Sermon Tone Analysis

Viewing The Christmas Tree

(What is Your Worldview?)

First - how did we get our Modern Day Christmas Tree?

Who Brought Christmas Trees to America?

Most 19th-century Americans found Christmas trees an oddity.

The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier.

The Pennsylvania German settlements had community trees as early as 1747.

But, as late as the 1840s Christmas trees were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was adopted so late in America.

To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred - and by that I mean, to be kept sacrosanct.

The pilgrims’s second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the observance, penalizing any frivolity.

The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event” after leading England into the Commonwealth, governing from 1653 to 1658.

In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations.

That stern solemnity continued until the 19th century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy.

An illustration from a December 1848 edition of the Illustrated London News shows Queen Victoria and her family surrounding a Christmas tree.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

In 1846, the popular royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince (and first cousin) Albert, were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree.

Unlike the previous royal family, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at court immediately became fashionable—not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society.

The Christmas tree had arrived.

By the 1890s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree popularity was on the rise around the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about four feet in height, while Americans liked their Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees mainly with homemade ornaments, while the German-American sect continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies.

Popcorn joined in after being dyed bright colors and interlaced with berries and nuts.

Electricity brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow for days on end.

With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition.

We will come back to the Christmas Tree.

Keep it tucked away in your thoughts while we examine some other Trees.

These trees are relevant to our Wednesday study.

On our Wednesday study (we are currently in Rev 2:7

And here, we have been doing a brief categorical study of the 4 categories of trees mentioned from the Garden of Eden.

Our text for this is Genesis 2:9

I will read the context for us: Genesis 2:8-15

“The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.

And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four river heads.

The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.

And the gold of that land is good.

Bdellium and the onyx stone are there.

The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush.

The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria.

The fourth river is the Euphrates.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.”

To tend and keep it - this was not a little garden.

This was not the Britt Garden.

You may not know this, but Peter Britt from Jacksonville, was an amazing gardener and horticulturist.

He had the first commercial vineyards and winery and commercial orchard, in the state of Oregon.

His garden was so amazing with tropical plants and a vast inventory of plantings that it was the number one tourist destination in the state of Oregon for some 20 years, advertised on the railroads.

This, of course, before Crater Lake became the number one Tourist Destination in the state.

But Peter’s little garden did not compare to what was in the Garden of Eden!

Eden was God’s plan for GOOD.

You see, God’s plan for man was a design for happiness and blessing and prosperity which was to be indefinitely perpetuated.

But even though everything was perfect, not all was according to the ultimate plan of GOD, yet.

Why??

Because Adam’s rib was still inside him.

The plan would not yet be complete, until God had completed him.

You see, Adam was able to survey the garden.

He found happiness and blessing and prosperity - as we will find, when we review the 4 Categories of Trees.

But God had a plan for man and his dominion of all that God had created for him.

That plan included Eve, and would extend to all generations after them.

Back to our Trees: Here are the four categories of Trees in the Garden of Eden:

There are four categories of trees in the garden of Eden, Genesis 2:9.

First category: every tree being desirable to the sight;

Category one is a category designed for the prosperity of the soul.

All happiness in mankind must relate to man’s soul: to his self-consciousness, to his frontal lobes, the emotion (which by itself is a disaster) which was designed to be responsive to thought in the soul, the volition which is not an issue in eternity but is an issue in time.

All happiness is related to what you think, and if doctrine is resident in your soul then you have happiness.

If you have in the soul capacity for happiness from doctrine, then what you are doing, no matter what it is, is the expression of that happiness.

Circumstances make no difference.

The first tree in the garden relates to the principle of happiness of soul.

Man was created in an environment of happiness for the soul.

The woman was taken from man and created in an environment of happiness for the soul.

Category one, then, was designed for man’s pleasure of soul, for his capacity for happiness.

Man in his original state then derived great pleasure from the observation of category one trees, the trees being desirable to the sight.

As created from God, then, man had perfect capacity for happiness.

Therefore the state of innocence in the garden was the epitome of great happiness.

Man reaped what God sowed, and even though man moved into a state of sin the principle of happiness never changed.

The trees were gone but the principle remains: happiness is a state of soul; misery is a state of soul.

In the original creation man was created to be a creature of happiness.

When man left the garden of his own volition he also walked out on perfect happiness.

Second Category: “and those good for food”

Category two trees, mentioned in Genesis 2:9 — “and those good for food.”

Fun and happiness has always been associated with eating, and the reason for that is that God designed the taste buds.

Then taste buds are not the soul, they are related to the body.

And the fact is that man in the garden had happiness of soul and happiness of body.

Food was designed to express happiness, to satisfy, to stimulate, to perpetuate health in the human body.

Again, the grace principle of blessing: Adam in innocence reaped what God sowed.

Stimulation of the taste buds was a reminder of God’s grace before sin, just as eating the bread of the communion table is reminder of exactly the same thing.

In our soul, if we have doctrine and when we eat the bread of the communion table it is a reminder of God’s grace after man sinned.

The body is the home of the soul.

Therefore the first two categories of trees in the garden provided blessing for both body and soul.

Third Category: “and the tree of life in the middle of the garden”

Category three tree is the tree of life.

The tree of life provided both the capacity for happiness plus blessing — total appreciation of God’s grace.

Hence the tree of life is the total happiness of man designed by God when He created Adam.

By creation, man was created to be happy.

He had a perfect soul in a perfect body.

Therefore he had perfect origin of happiness, perfect expression of happiness.

The tree of life combined immortality with perfect happiness and could only be lost through Adam’s disobedience.

Man was created, with free will in order to resolve Satan’s appeal of his sentence to go to the lake of fire, Matthew 25:41.

Therefore the tree of life was the expression of man’s positive volition toward God’s provision: perfect happiness, perfect environment.

The tree of life was provided under the principle of grace.