Going to a farm or a mountain to cut down a Christmas tree belies the tricks of human perception. A tree that looks majestic and just right while it’s firmly planted into the ground outdoors, once chopped and transported back to the home, is transformed into something altogether different. Trying to carry it into the house on its side, like a hide-a-bed or a casket, the tree is suddenly too wide, needs to be trimmed to even it out; that one branch will have to be cut off or hidden somehow. The sap we never noticed seems to be everywhere, oozing and sticking to my hand with every grasp.

It is fresh, the fresh-cut aroma filling the air, but it takes up so much space in the room that seemed more than adequate before; now suddenly, it becomes one where we think of raising the ceiling or bumping the room out into the porch outside, or at least expanding the window into a bay.

Taming the tree, getting it trimmed down and put up and then decorated and lit, is so much harder than I thought, than I imagined it to be. But it’s a tradition we enjoy every year. We make it work.

Christmas is when people try to bring God into the house, too. Like the tree, a concept to be tamed, adapted, trimmed, made to fit into the homes we’ve made, and perhaps we want to give gifts to others to express our love, however mixed with a sense of obligation.

But for many, it is only for a season, and then, when the season is over, we unplug everything and drag it out to the curb for the trash. Lights we enjoy for the season and then, gone. Back to real life.

With God, the real God, there is no in season or out of season, and no obligation to suit us.

How much more wild is God than this tree at Christmas. Maker, Creator, the One audaciously being born in a place for animals, close to the wilds, outside the cozy inn. There’s no fitting him, really, into a home, no chopping him down to size or strapping him to the top of a car. Nevertheless, we marshal on.

Then, without much warning, suddenly it seems, we’re not bringing God into our house; instead, he’s going crazy to bring us into a different house, one we don’t own or even know. All the work we’ve done to make things seem warm and welcoming, all the money we’ve spent on lights and ornaments and food, all the gifts, fall away, because there’s something else going on, something we cannot see. The dawning realization comes that our home is not our home.

We hang our Christmas art on the walls of home. The winter Grandma Moses print, a winter village full of activity, a red frame I did myself a while back, the nail and picture hanger positioned just right so it hangs evenly above our couch. There’s the painting we first saw on our honeymoon. A crippled man on the ground, his crutch cast aside as he prays in front of a wooden cross planted in the snowy ground. In the shadows of the horizon, if you look, you can see the church emerging from the painted mists.

We drink warm spicy cider and look out at the snow falling magically, the twinkling icicles from gutters shining. Time to make our ice cream sauce to give away.

From the manger to the garden, it’s different for him. There’s no room for the newborn, no place for him to lay his head, no dwelling to call his home.

Jesus drinks from a different cup, so different that he asks not to drink it. But drink he does, and then stretches out his arms, open-palmed and rests them on the tree, braced to receive the nails.

And the wild treehouses of heaven, nestled along the singing river of life, places we’ve never seen, music we’ve never heard, doors with wreaths on them made from thorny dry branches woven round like crowns with bells and the handwritten parchment greeting: welcome.