Our Christmas tree this year is the clerodendrum (Climbing Bleeding Heart vine). I am absolutely delighted with our Christmas tree!
Perhaps you might be wondering: “Why on earth would anyone have such a strange Christmas tree?”
It all began a few years back … when both my kids went away to college.
All throughout their growing up years, we would always go as a family to the Christmas tree farm and cut down our Christmas tree. My son would always put the star on top of the tree, and my daughter would always put the very first candy cane on the tree. And each year the kids would select a special keepsake ornament for that year.
But times change.
The Christmas tree farm we had always gone to for years was sold to become a housing development. The kids were growing up … entering high school. Our family moved across the country. And we got a fake pre-lit Christmas tree.
The fake pre-lit Christmas tree was beautiful. But there at last came that fateful year when I found myself decorating the Christmas tree all by myself. Both the kids were away at college … having the grandest of times! Exciting Christmas events and activities on campus! Tons of fun with their college friends.
As I pulled out their keepsake ornaments to hang on that fake pre-lit tree that year … I vowed: Never again. Never again would I do this.
The following summer we sold the house … downsized, and got rid of much of our belongings … including the fake pre-lit Christmas tree. I was happy to see it go.
Since then, I’ve found great delight in decorating the most unusual of Christmas trees each year. Last year our Christmas tree was the palm tree … sparkling with white lights and shimmering red tinsel. So festive!
A few years back I learned that the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, London, is a gift each year from the people of Norway.
According to www.london.gov.uk: “Every year, since 1947, the people of Norway have given the people of London a Christmas tree. This gift is in gratitude for Britain’s support for Norway during World War II. The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is usually a Norwegian spruce over 20 meters high and 50 to 60 years old. It is selected from the forests surrounding Oslo with great care several months, even years, in advance. The Norwegian foresters who look after it describe it fondly as ‘the queen of the forest.’”
I was inspired by this tale and decided it would be wonderful to have a Norwegian spruce as a Christmas tree!
The hemlocks are all dying in our forest, and we’ve been replanting the forest with baby cedars … might as well get a Norwegian spruce … or two. So we purchased two little Norwegian spruce trees from the nursey.
In the true spirit of the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree, we gave one of the little Norwegian spruce trees to our son to be his Christmas tree … and we decorated the other as our Christmas tree. Here you can see our little Norwegian spruce Christmas tree on the left, and our son’s little Norwegian spruce Christmas tree on the right. Our son named his tree: Stanley.
(both little Norwegian spruce trees are now currently growing in the forest.)
And so we come to our Clerodendrum Christmas tree this year. This clerodendrum was a gift to my daughter from a patient at the physical therapy clinic where she used to work. This thoughtful patient had taken a small cutting from his clerodendrum plant and had rooted it and brought it in to the office to give to my daughter. The plant grew beautifully in the office waiting area, and it reached a point where everyone in the office considered it to be the office’s clerodendrum plant.
Before my daughter left that particular job, she took a small cutting of the gift-clerodendrum, and rooted it for a plant of her own. This Clerodendrum Christmas tree is not only a gift from a thoughtful kind patient … it is also a gift of my daughter who left behind the original “gift plant” for her coworkers to enjoy, and instead brought home a small cutting.
How perfect it is for a clerodendrum vine to be a Christmas tree … as we celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ who stated: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” – John 15:5
