The Cast Off Christmas Tree — A Christmas-Lenten Children’s Book
Saints throughout history — like St Francis and St Thérèse — have never ceased marveling with amazement and awe at the Littleness of God. We might think of St Thérèse’s exclamation: “It would be nice if I could die on the 25th of March; that’s when Jesus was littlest”, or we may think of the way St Joseph of Cupertino used to be seen to fly through the air with a little doll of the baby Jesus in His arms. Finally, we might call to mind the amazement that St Francis had in the mystery of the Littleness of God in Bethlehem when he became the first to set up a crèche. Here is Pope Benedict XVI’s description of it from his Christmas Homily on 24 December 2011:
In 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in Greccio with an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the mystery of Christmas came to light. Saint Francis of Assisi called Christmas “the feast of feasts” – above all other feasts – and he celebrated it with “unutterable devotion.” He kissed images of the Christ-child with great devotion and he stammered tender words such as children say, so Thomas of Celano tells us.
This has nothing to do with sentimentality. It is right here, in this new experience of the reality of Jesus’ humanity, that the great mystery of faith is revealed. Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God’s humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love.
Francis arranged for Mass to be celebrated on the manger that stood between the ox and the ass. Later, an altar was built over this manger, so that where animals had once fed on hay, men could now receive the flesh of the spotless lamb Jesus Christ, for the salvation of soul and body, as Thomas of Celano tells us. Francis himself, as a deacon, had sung the Christmas Gospel on the holy night in Greccio with resounding voice. Through the friars’ radiant Christmas singing, the whole celebration seemed to be a great outburst of joy. It was the encounter with God’s humility that caused this joy – his goodness creates the true feast.
A New Children’s Book from Cenacle Press
This same wonder pervades Cenacle Press’ upcoming children’s book, The Cast Off Christmas Tree (available for pre-order at a 10% discount; pre-orders will arrive before or during the Christmas season). The book ties together the Christmas and Paschal mysteries by telling a story from the point of view of a little Christmas tree that is purchased by an unusual family that does not move at the rest of the world’s pace. As this family did not begin celebrating Christmas until on Christmas Eve, they were always among the last tto purchase a tree. The choicest trees would have been taken by that point, but to this family that too was part of the spirit of Christmas. They choose the little tree, which seems far from perfect, but to them this tree is exactly right.
Here is what happens:
It seemed strange to the little tree that people would start celebrating Christmas so early, but the older trees had told him not to worry about it because it was just the way some people did things. So he hadn’t worried about it before, but now that it was Christmas Eve, he began to worry again because there was no one coming to look for trees. He had heard rumors that some people were actually done with their celebrations and had already begun to dispose of their trees, but he couldn’t believe that could be happening. And yet he had expected a large number of shoppers coming to buy trees to begin their big celebration tomorrow, but no one was here. It was very discouraging to all the trees that remained on the lot. The little tree wanted to say something to encourage everyone, but he really didn’t know what to say, so he just remained silent.
After a bit, the silence was broken by several families who came in and walked around. As some of them bought trees, a certain joy and expectation filled the air. The salesman led one family right down the little tree’s row. They stopped and looked at a big tree nearby and the salesman said, “It’s a big tree that’s going for half-price since it’s so late.” One of the children asked her dad, “What about this one, Dad?” She was pointing to the little tree!
The salesman interrupted, “Oh, that cast off. It wouldn’t do you any good – too deformed.”
The father lifted the little tree and held it up. He looked carefully at it. The little tree feared what he would say.
Setting the tree down, the father looked at his children, and they all nodded. And the father announced, “This tree will do fine. It fits the spirit of Christmas.” The salesman looked surprised and the father turned and looked directly at him and said, “You know, Christmas is when God sent his son, Jesus, to become a man so that what is weak and broken can be made to serve perfectly in God’s plan.”
The Little Tree and the Little Way
Reading this description of Christmas as the feast of Jesus coming for what is “weak and broken” calls to mind something St Thérèse said of her offering of herself to Jesus as a Victim of Holocaust to Merciful Love:
I am but a weak and helpless child, yet it is my very weakness which makes me dare to offer myself, O Jesus, as victim to Thy Love. In olden days only pure and spotless holocausts would be accepted by the Omnipotent God, nor could His Justice be appeased save by the most perfect sacrifices; but now that the law of fear has given way to the law of love, I have been chosen, though a weak and imperfect creature, as Love’s victim. And is not the choice a fitting one? Most surely, for in order that Love may be wholly satisfied, it must stoop even unto nothingness and transform that nothingness into fire.
How wonderful it is to be under the new dispensation of the baby God-man who makes all things new! And what is St Thérèse’s little way if not a profound union with Christ – with Christ, that is, in His littleness, neediness, and sufferings more than in His Greatness, Majesty, and Glory? St Thérèse saw her littleness as making her resemble the God-man, capable of a profound union with the Littleness of God. She was astonished to consider that God had became so little and so weak in Jesus. Nothing seemed impossible to her when God’s love was so extravagant. And so she advocated a way, not of greatness and glory, but of littleness and childhood.
A Family Story
The Cast Off Christmas Tree – this story of the imperfect little Christmas tree that tells of Christ’s mercy towards the imperfect – is the story of a real event in the author’s family that happened in 1981.
Tom Gryniewicz, the author, and his wife, who is an Oblate of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle here at Silverstream, wished their family to celebrate Advent during Advent, with no admixture of Christmas. They made their family custom to wait till Christmas before celebrating it. Advent had no Christmas carols, no Christmas decorations, but in place of these, the family had Advent prayers, songs, and decorations. Tom and his wife explain:
The traditions that we have developed over the years have played an important part in our family. We decided early on that the Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter seasons were good opportunities to encourage our children in a deeper spiritual appreciation of salvation history. Over the years, we modified things as needed, all based on three principles:
- make it simple,
- make it consistent,
- and make it enjoyable.
Our traditions were built around a number of objects which symbolized the season. When we brought them out each year, the whole family knew the season had begun.
For the Advent-Christmas season, these included
- A large Advent Wreath with greenery and purple and pink candles
- A felt Jesse Tree banner which a group of mothers sewed when our children were young
- A felt Nativity scene banner.
Each day at dinner in Advent we would light the appropriate Advent candles while singing a verse or two of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and conclude with a prayer. The children would each participate by doing one of the parts according to their ages and abilities. The younger children especially wanted a part to play in the Advent Wreath ceremony.
Then one child would go to the Jesse Tree, which was in the shape of a Christmas Tree with a small red felt ornament attached to the end of each branch. They would remove the next red ball and replace it with the felt symbol connected to an Old Testament figure. Then they would try to guess who the symbol represented—coached by their older siblings who had one this for Advents past. There would then be a short discussion about that Biblical figure and their role in salvation history. The tree became more festive as additional symbols were added to each branch. The anticipation grew as we approached Christmas day when they knew that the Christ symbol would be put on the very top of the tree. Then, the completed Jesse Tree was displayed through the 12 Days of Christmas until Epiphany.
As close to Christmas Eve as possible, the entire house would change. Christmas carols, eggnog, nuts with their nutcracker, Christmas decorations, and the white, green, and red Christmas traditions took the place of Advent purple and the somber, longing expectancy of Advent.
Because of all of this, Christmas tree purchasing was a rather last minute affair. The Gryniewiczs explain:
The actual Christmas tree has always been decorated at the end of Advent as a family festival with everyone participating.
Christmas itself would begin with the Polish Vigilia and Mass. Obviously, this was quite different from the world around them, which had been celebrating Christmas since Thanksgiving. Sometimes the kids noticed Christmas trees on the side of the road a day or two after Christmas when their family was just beginning to celebrate it. As the Christmas decorations were about to come down in one home, they went up in another.
One Fateful Christmas
While the Gryniewiczs have been married for 52 years now, with 5 kids and 14 grandkids, in 1981 they had been married for only 10 years. Even so, they and their 3 children celebrated Advent fully. That year, they went out close to Christmas to purchase their Christmas tree, only to discover the lot nearly empty and the best trees long gone. Choosing from those available, they brought home a Christmas tree, a “cast off” that was bound to be a disappointment to children who had already been waiting a month longer than the rest of the world for Christmas.
Tom decided to turn a disappointment into an opportunity. How could he cheer up his children for their disappointment? He would write a story about their Christmas tree, a story that would cast the event in a different light!
This story is the result.
A Success Story
After that, the story became a yearly tradition in the Gryniewicz household. Tom would read to his family “our story” just about every year, and by the time the younger children were born, it was already an immemorial tradition that the family had to purchase a tree with some blemish, a real “cast off”. Of course, the children might still look for the best tree that they could pass off as a “cast off”, but the very idea that a Christmas tree need not be perfect sank into their subconscious.
The Paschal Mystery
The second part of the book tells of the reusing of the Christmas tree for the Holy Week Cross. This tradition has profound theological significance. The Saints have often thought of the manger as an altar in Bethlehem, the “House of Bread” (as Bethelehem means), an altar on which the true Bread of Life rested. How can we fail to see the Mass in this?
Flash forward 33 years, and we find another altar, an altar wooden like the manger. This was the altar of the Cross.
Was this not what the tradition of putting the Manger Scene beneath the Christmas Tree and then reusing the wood of the tree for the Holy Week Cross signified? Jesus is one Sacrifice from womb to tomb, from cradle to cross. The Virgin Womb of Mary corresponds to the virgin tomb of Joseph of Aramathea; the wood of the manger corresponds to the Wood of the Cross, but Jesus, the Bread of Life, is the same in all four. How beautifully this is signified by this little detail of this book!
Christ Emptied Himself
This is the spirit of St Paul’s effusion of wonder in Philippians 2, where he expresses astonishment at God’s profound self-emptying, or exinanition:
Jesus Christ, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, yet He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.
In this book, we see our union with Christ’s self-emptying shown through the eyes of the little tree, first as it participates in the self-emptying of God at Bethlehem, and later through its participation in the mystery of the cross.
Unpublished for 42 Years
As the years passed by, and the book was read, the children would sometimes say to their father: “Dad, you should publish this”, but the years passed and nothing was done about it. The years piled up until the story had turned more than 40.
Nancy Rosato-Nuzzo
All of this changed in 2023 when Providence arranged for Tom Gryniewicz to be able to team up with Cenacle Press and Nancy Rosato-Nuzzo, the illustrator of the Curious Little Catholic children’s book series that was reviewed and edited by Cardinal Burke. Nancy Rosato-Nuzzo was able to make use of her considerable artistic talent to bring the story to life, and The Cenacle Press is honored to be able to make the book available.
