The Jesse Tree:
An Advent Celebration
 
Many people mark the days of Advent with a calendar, opening a tiny door for each day leading up to Christmas. The Jesse Tree Advent tradition also marks each day from the first Sunday in Advent to Christmas.
 
We all have a family tree—branches filled with mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Jesus has a family tree as well. In Isaiah 11:1 we read, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Jesse was the father of David, Israel’s greatest king. And it was from David’s lineage that Jesus came.
 
The Jesse Tree traces the family heritage of Jesus through Advent. It reminds us that the coming of Jesus was long prophesied, and that in the stories of his ancestors, we can hear echoes of his own life, death, and resurrection.
 
Each symbol on the Jesse Tree represents a story in Jesus’ family line. The stories help us remember Jesus’s family and our place in it—we remember our adoption into God’s family. And as we teach the next generation, we pray that they will find themselves in this family as well as the Spirit gives them living faith.
 
Suggestions for using this devotional guide
 
  • Your Jesse Tree can take on any number of forms: A silhouette of a tree may be sewn or painted, cut out of felt, quilted, hung from the fridge, a wall, a door, a window. Or you may hang the ornaments on a small evergreen tree, a cluster of red dogwood branches, a pot of hemlock, pine, spruce, sticks or holly.

  • Decorate the ornaments. You can use coloured pencils, markers or crayons. String them up, tape them up, button them, hang them using paper clips on any tree of your own imagining or envisioning. 
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  • Each day read the verses and the devotional text and hang up the corresponding symbol. If you miss a day that’s ok! Just catch up by doing more than one per day. If you have children, consider having them read the Scripture, or any other section.
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  • Whatever you do, be creative as much as you wish! Have fun anticipating the coming of Christ!
Jesse Tree Resources:
Questions and symbols in the readings and ornaments are adapted from:
Jesse Tree Devotions by Grace Claus (www.rca.org/jessetree);
The Advent Jesse Tree, by Dean Meador Lambert;
The Greatest Gift, by Ann Voskamp.

​ORNAMENTS:

For alternative print ornaments you can go to:
OTHER ADVENT RESOURCES​: ​