Chrismon…a combination of the words “Christ” and “monogram,” meaning symbols of Christ. During the early nineties, our United Methodist Women adopted a church-wide project to prepare a Chrismon tree for our sanctuary. The ladies did their homework. They discovered that in a small Lutheran Church in Danville, Virginia in 1957, Frances Kipps Spencer began thinking of a way to decorate the Christmas tree in her church using symbols that signify the life of Christ. She made numerous designs and shared her craft in several books and publications for other churches and Christian groups to use.
With this information and patterns in hand, this project became a combination of a craft class for fellowship and devotional time to study and remember the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ. Symbols such as a star, the cross, a fish, a crown, the triquetra, and the alpha and omega were chosen. All ladies of the congregation were invited to participate. Some chose to be in fellowship with each other at the church while others chose to work in the sanctuary of their own homes.
Since Chrismons are traditionally colored white and gold, (White is the liturgical color for Christmas and symbolizes that Jesus was pure and perfect; Gold symbolizes his majesty and glory.) a craft room was filled with white felt, fabric, gold beads and sequins, sewing thread, glue guns…all the essentials needed to make these beautiful ornaments.
My dear Christian mother was in awe of these ornaments. She participated in the classes, delicately cutting patterns and sewing beads. She enjoyed learning about the meaning of each ornament. The project had served to be a perfect opportunity for sisters in Christ to become closer to each other, to become deeper in their faith, and share their talents with the entire church family.
As many of you know, aging parents are very difficult to buy for at Christmas. Remembering Mother’s love of these ornaments, I decided to take the patterns and reduce to a size that would fit her 7 foot tree. Every evening after dinner, I would cut, sew, and glue in an effort to give her something special that year when our family gathered at her home for our annual Thanksgiving lunch.
Each year when lunch was over and as the ladies would begin to clean the dishes and salvage leftovers, the men would head to the storage building and bring in her artificial tree for the annual decorating. This year the decorations would be different. Mother received an early Christmas gift . . . a big box of beautiful white and gold Chrismons. Needless to say, she was overjoyed. She carefully oversaw the hanging of each ornament. And when Christmas was over, she was very careful to wrap and store her ornaments for the following year. One of her grandsons took great interest in her ornaments and the joke between them was that she would “will” the ornaments to him one day. Decorating her Chrismon tree continued to be an annual tradition until she was no longer able to live at home. She was true to her word and now the Chrismons adorn a tree in Justin’s home.
As the years have passed, many of my church’s Chrismons have been mended or needed to be replaced. But I never enter the sanctuary during Advent that I don’t think of my mother. Her love for her God, her church, her family……and her Chrismons.
- Janice C. Addington
Click here to learn more about the history of Chrismons.
