Decorating with Evergreens

Merry Christmas! Do you agree with the cherished Andy Williams song, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”? Certainly, as gardeners, what could be more wonderful than the time-of-year tradition of bringing trees and branches into the house?! Conifers, no less, with the fragrance-infusion of a fresh walk in the woods, ushering in the chilly season with forested flair. Is decorating with evergreens rooted in God’s Word? You be the judge! Consider Isaiah’s proclamation:

The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together to beautify the place of My sanctuary; and I will make the place of My feet glorious. Isaiah 60:13 KJV

Who can say whether this Word had been at work in God’s people all along, moving generations to adorn home-sanctuaries with evergreenery through the centuries? Over the years, we have taken a Christmas garden plunge into cedar of Lebanon, cypress, juniper, Italian stone pine, boxwood and laurustinus, the line-up of species represented in this verse. I am inspired to present the fir tree, most likely Abies cilicica, at long last completing this catalog of Biblical conifers.

Walk with me through a Scripture selection that adds a special depth to decorating with evergreens this year, featuring the fir tree.

Empty of Spirit, Full of Thirst

Our fir tree devotion begins in a surprising place: Jesus hanging on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23, 1 Peter 2:24). Though the reason for the season is Jesus’ birth, firs and other evergreens connect more intimately to His crucifixion.

Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” John 19:28 NIV

Admittedly, I usually brush past Jesus’ vulnerable void at this low point of His crucifixion, because a gentle plant fills the next verse: hyssop, where it is more pleasant to focus my attention. Join me now in resisting the urge to turn away from His pain. Let us linger in the incredible grace of Jesus being thirsty and trace this moment back to its symbolism in evergreen trees.

When the Savior confessed His thirst, He exposed His complete humanity. This holy man craved hydration: He allowed himself to experience neediness and utter lack, crossing over completely into life on our terms. In the next horrific moment, He drowns in death.

This meek plea, I am thirsty, is a magnificently humble and relational gesture, all the more epic because He spoke at the Feast of Tabernacles precisely to the matter of being thirsty.

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. John 7:37 LSB

To know that He thirsted in His final moment before dying is to know that He knows the depth of our desparation—our void, our dry well of soul—willingly entering our emptiness by giving up His Spirit (John 19:30). He went there; the great I AM embraced our human, needy state of being. He said, “come to me” at the feast, yet on the cross, He came to us!

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” [By] this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were going to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. John 7:38-39 LSB

In this last moment in His crucifixion, like the last day of the feast, He sank into the thirst that is only satisfied by His Spirit. He not only beckoned us to alleviate our condition by coming to Him, but he lived and endured our condition.

He offers Himself in depleted emptiness. Jesus went to the desert to hunger (Luke 4:2 ASV) and to the cross to thirst.

Satisfying our Thirst

Since it has always been the Lord’s move to speak to the void (Genesis 1:2-3), glimpses of God’s provision to satisfy our spiritual thirst speckle the Scriptures. Isaiah is particularly poetic in this movement, and it was his prophecy that Jesus repeated at the Feast of Tabernacles. Isaiah 44:3 draws out the more direct reference that Jesus quoted, but a parallel passage in Isaiah 41 expands quelling thirstiness to a more dramatic countryside display:

“The poor and homeless are desperate for water, their tongues parched and no water to be found. But I’m there to be found, I’m there for them, and I, God of Israel, will not leave them thirsty. I’ll open up rivers for them on the barren hills, spout fountains in the valleys. I’ll turn the baked-clay badlands into a cool pond, the waterless waste into splashing creeks. Isaiah 41:17-18 The Message

God is ever-mindful of the thirsty state of His people, ready with His powerful possibilities to shape and form the landscape to our favor.

Isaiah’s Evergreens

The next verses take this veiled to Sinai-turned-Eden reference to express His poetic panache in evergreen trees, proclaiming parched land becoming cool, fir-scented glens, a canopy of cover, shelter, and shade.

I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set junipers in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it. Isaiah 41:19 NIV

The fir trees—in a chorus of evergreen plantings—become evergreen signposts of God’s everlasting gesture to provide His Spirit, filling us with knowledge and understanding. Let decorating your tree become a decree! Speak to any “baked-clay badlands” in your family life to be transformed to “splashing creeks!” Declare that the Living Water who is the Holy Spirit washes over you with His evergreen, everlasting love, and let Him know you want to be His witness.

Decorating with Evergreens

The Cicilian fir, Abies cilicica, is generally accepted as the fir tree of the Bible, though we will not find this Abies for sale at the Christmas tree lot! From the Pinaceae or pine family, this species is native to the Asia Minor region east to Lebanon, most commonly growing in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey. It is not cultivated for the nursery trade, though valued for its lumber.

Also known as Taurus fir or Syrian fir, this stout, conical tree has warm green, flat needles with bright green branch tips. Female cones form at the top of the tree, upright, about 4 to 6 inches tall with a slender, tubular form. Cilicians can reach 60 to 80 feet tall, standing upright among the cedars and junipers of the region. Cold hardiness zones 5 to 8.

What distinguishes firs from other conifers, like pines and spruces? Naturally, their cones determine their classification, but a needles check can also be revealing: firs have flat, soft needles, while pines are more girthy in diameter, forming in clusters, and spruces are spikey at the ends.

Cypresses and junipers, by contrast, have a jointed, scale-like texture to their needles, and more importantly, their cones appear more like berries, with the scales forming a spherical surface instead of fluffing out in pinecone fashion.

Find more intensive information at these great resources:

North Carolina State Extension – Abies cilicica

University of Tennessee Forest Resources – Cilician Fir

Firs vs. Spruce: What’s the Difference?

Discover the Cilician fir on the campus of Stanford University!

Closing Prayer

O Lord, thank you for the blessings You put in our lives. So many signposts in the Christmas landscape bring us to You—of course they do, the season is here to celebrate You! Even as distractions tug at my heart, the trees and branches bring me back to You; focus me through the fragrance to Your everlasting, loving care. Where it is barren and beastly hot in my life, so to speak, remind me that You usher in evergreen trees to cool, shelter, and refresh me, holding me in Your everlasting embrace. Help me carry on in decorating with evergreens to remember Your work at hand, and You are so creative! Thank you for caring for my desperate needs and flooding my feeble soul with You. You have found me, dear Lord, and this is just the best news! Hallelujah and Amen!

For I supply streams of water in the desert and rivers in the wilderness to satisfy the thirst of my people, my chosen ones, so that you, whom I have formed for myself, will proclaim my praise. Isaiah 44:20-21 TPT

Photo Credits: cover photo ©Shelley S. Cramm noble fir line up at a local nursery; © Menno Van Der Haven | Dreamstime.com ID 281065359 Cilician fir in a botanical garden. Abies cilicica, also known as Cilician fir or or Taurus fir, in conical or pyramidal shape; C. Kastner, drawing of Abies cilicica (Antoine & Kotschy Carriere), featured in Iconographie des conifers (1912-1924) by L.G.C. Parde, plate 17, from PlantIllustrations.org; © Cebeciz | Dreamstime.com ID 287940159 Juniper and Cilician fir forest on Taurus Mountains

KJV denotes Scriptures taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version published in 1611, authorized by King James I of England, which is public domain in the United States.

LSB denotes Scripture quotations taken from the Legacy Standard Bible Copyright ©2021 by The Lockman Foundation All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org

The Message denotes Scripture quotations taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

NIV denotes Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

TPT denotes Scripture quotations taken from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018, 2020 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com