A Pagan holiday tree blessing

Those Pagans who choose to bring a live tree—mine is specifically a Christmas tree but this works for any winter festival day—into the house at this time of the year might want to express special reverence for it. Not only is it sacred in and of itself and a guest in your home, but if you cut it, it will eventually die, which means you’ve asked it to make a sacrifice for you.

This year we went to a tree farm to cut our own rather than going to a lot so I could sit with it for a moment and ask its permission. Once we brought it in and decorated it, I did a little ritual welcoming and honoring it. I came up with it myself on the spur of the moment but I think it worked pretty well, and I figured I’d describe it here on the offchance it resonates with anyone else and they’d like to adopt or adapt it:

1. Sit beneath the tree for a few moments. Open yourself to its presence and let it feel yours. Focus on your breathing—think of how when you breathe out, you’re offering carbon dioxide for the tree to use, and when the tree respirates, it’s offering you oxygen. Feel that exchange of life and how it connects you with it in fellowship.

2. When it feels right, light a candle (I used white, use whatever color you prefer) and some incense or smoke purification tool of your choice. Set both beneath the tree for a moment. 

3. Move the incense around the tree, letting the smoke waft into its branches. Set it back beneath the tree and sit for another moment or two.

4. Say something like this: 

Friend tree, I thank you for coming into our home and I honor you as our guest. I have adorned you with light and splendor as is your due. Gladden our hearts and minds with your radiant presence, let us enjoy your companionship until your time comes to leave us, and return in peace to the living Earth our mother for her blessing.

This concludes the ritual. Leave the incense beneath the tree as an offering and extinguish the candle or let it burn as you’re inclined. 

I feel like this is a good basic framework that can either be used as-is or adapted in whatever way you choose according to your own tradition. One could engage with the tree alone or invoke a deity or spirit; I‘m a Christian Druid so I also incorporated a Catholic prayer for the blessing of a Christmas tree, but a prayer to any deity would work just as well. 

Hope this might be useful to someone! (And if you repost it anywhere I‘d appreciate credit.) May the light and grace of whatever tradition you’re celebrating be with you—and your tree.