The Trees Kneel At Christmas

I discovered this book reading Melissa Wiley's blog at http://www.melissawiley.net/ (Nov. 21) and couldn't wait to borrow it from my library. The children and I enjoyed it immensly.

The Trees Kneel At Christmas
Written by Maud Hart Lovelace
Illustrated by Marie-Claude Monchaux
1951, Reprint 1994, ABDO & Daughters Publishing
112 pages

Maud Hart Lovelace is famous for her Betsy-Tacy series of chapter books. The Trees Kneel At Christmas is a delightful story of two Lebanese-American children in 1951 Brooklyn. Their grandmother tells them how the trees kneel on Christmas in their homeland of Lebanon, but in their new home of Brooklyn the people do not have enough faith for the trees to kneel.

However, the children do have faith and they set out to prove that the trees do in fact kneel down in honor of our Lord's birth in Brooklyn. When the adults leave for Midnight Mass, the children sneak away to the park so that they can witness the trees at midnight.

This is a story about having the faith of a child, the kind of faith that Jesus calls us all to hold.