I am fairly certain that a goodly number of you who celebrated Christmas this year with a Christmas tree had an angel atop it. Well, besides simple tradition, there is a story as to why the angel is camped out on top of the tree (and other than the fact it is a wonderful sniping position…)
The Scene: The North Pole
The Date: Christmas Eve
The Players: Santa Claus (aka Old Saint Nick, aka Saint Nicholas, aka The Big Fat Man, aka Big Red, aka….), and a certain little angel (remaining nameless, for the sake of protecting his identity)
It had been a horrible Christmas Eve… All of the reindeer had come down with some nasty form of the cold, and were completely incapable of standing up, much less flying around the world in 24 hours, visiting all the children of that same world… The elves had decided the had had it up to about here (Most of the time they are gesturing about a foot over their heads, but, considering their average height, what are you going to do?) with the amount of work preceeding Christmas (they blamed poor planning), booked a Caribbean cruise for the rest of the season, and left that morning. But the real kicker is that Mrs. Claus went with them… Or, rather, went with the head elf. Evidently size does not matter…
So there Santa sat, slumped in his massive chair behind his massive desk, a cup of forgotten, almost-congealed hot cocoa in one hand, and a half-eaten cookie in the other. To say he was not having a good day would be putting it mildly. Were there still any elves around, the sheer look upon his visage would have been sufficient for them to spontaneously combust, and leave a small, smoking pair of boots behind.
But against his door came a gentle rapping, once, then again, when Santa made no notice of it whatsoever. Shaking his head, and realizing that it sounded kind of like an elf’s knock, and realizing he could put it back to work (or drop kick it into Egypt), he hefted his bulk out of the chair, and shambled over to the door. Looking down, after opening it, he did not see what he expected.
There, before him, was the most beautiful of all the cherubs, holding the bottom of an enormously large Christmas tree, completely decorated, dressed-up, and inundated in the Christmas spirit. Evidently the angel had been tasked with bringing the tree to Santa’s abode, since angels are kind of like ants with their load capacities… Regardless, the cherub was looking up at Santa with its quite-literally-angelic face, eyes wide at seeing the embodiment of Christmas looking something like an axe-murderer, and each stared at the other a moment before the angel cleared its throat and politely said, “Uhm, Mr. Santa Claus, where would you like this Christmas tree?”
….
And that, boys and girls, is why angels are on top of Christmas trees…
(Old, I know, but it still makes me laugh every time I see an angel up there…)
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