All right, I hear tell that there are people out there dying of curiosity because of the post about our talking tree.  It’s OK, you can have one too, if you like, though you might prefer to do it next Christmas.  Talking trees can be quite nice.  Ours actually turned out being more than 10 feet tall, but we then had to cut it shorter so that it could stand up in our house. 

At first glance, it may look like many typical Christmas trees, but a closer examination will reveal that such is not quite the case.  Rather than the typical ornaments found on Christmas trees, this tree’s décor consists of individually created paper decorations, each containing a Biblical passage that touches upon speech.  That is why we called it a talking tree – because each tree ornament was a “talking verse”.  This has become a sort of Christmas tradition for us.  Each year we choose a different topic.  For example, our first nine years were dedicated to covering each of the aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23.  Once the topic is chosen, each person finds verses that go with that topic and makes about half a dozen to a dozen decorations.  You will notice from the pictures that certain individuals prefer the computer’s chirography over their own.

Our hope in having this ornamentation hanging on the tree is that people will read them and think about these verses.  Another result of this kind of decoration is that the Christmas tree stays up much longer than many people’s trees.  We generally don’t take it down until it seriously starts loosing needles.