The Spinning Tree

The question was still being asked when a “yes” flew out of my mouth faster than Santa’s reindeer on Christmas Eve.

And that is how it came to be that I have a spinning Christmas tree. 

A friend no longer used her rotating base and was looking for someone to take it off her hands. Thus, the Christmas tree in our house has been spinning joy, delight, and magical merriment for the past several years.

I didn’t know I needed my tree to spin until that moment. 

I didn’t know there was any such marvelous enchantment as a revolving Christmas tree. 

I didn’t know what I had been missing all these decades of stagnant evergreens. 

And, I don’t know who invented this piece of pure Yuletide genius, but they deserve a plate of Christmas cookies.

It just makes sense if you think about it. When a girl tries on a new dress, we immediately ask her to “spin around,” don’t we? We want to see the whole thing in all its beauty.

After many years of only dressing the front of my tree and leaving its poor backside "naked and afraid," it is now fully clothed and confident. And, it spins on a consistent, timer-set basis every day during the season, showing off more LED string lights than its branches can handle, little handprint reindeer, clothespin angels, memories of family trips, and reminders of the very first Christmas.

The tree itself is nothing to look at; an old, unlit, needle-bare, plastic tree that slightly leans. But, covered in twinkle lights and decorations and paired with a base that spins like a record of Kenny G’s smooth jazz, it’s something special.

Mesmerized, I often find myself gazing at it like Zuzu Bailey, sick with a cold, stares at her flower in the best movie of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life. 

“I’m not sleepy. I want to look at my flower,” she tells her dad, George, as he tries to coax her to bed while wrestling with his own problems.

Well, I think maybe that’s the spirit of this rotating Christmas tree. 

The world keeps on spinning. 

Time keeps on moving. 

Life is busy, distracting, overstimulating. 

It is a vapor that “appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

I must remember to rest and fix my gaze on Jesus; let Him captivate my spinning mind and weary heart.

He is the reason we celebrate.

He’s the ultimate gift.

He's the light of the world.

Sometimes I just need a moving tree to make me stop and smell the flowers.

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