Many people just lack the time to think about the true significance of Christmas and the tree which has become a symbol of this holiday throughout the world. We can perhaps see behind the outward glamor of the tree with its candles, balls, silver tinsel, and a shiny star at the top, by looking at it again with an open heart and listening to what it can tell us. In ancient philosophies and religions, for instance, we find that the tree has often been used as a symbol for the universe, whose roots sprang forth from the divine heart of all things and whose trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves were the different worlds and spheres. The colorful glass balls on it then stand for the manifold planets and globes, connected with everything else throughout the cosmos by the symbolic tinsel and gay festoons. But they also denote light, which brings forth and is all life in the universe.
Light is both spirit and matter, so that everything is really a form of light.
Finally, the star at the top of the tree may symbolize our own highest self or, from a universal standpoint, the divine essence of the cosmos towards which all of us as god-sparks are striving. In Genesis we read about the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. H. P. Blavatsky describes the tree of life as inverted, with its roots generated in heaven, growing out of the Rootless Root of all-being. Thus the universe was formed in its entirety. Adam, an unself-conscious godspark or monad, disregarded that warning and ate from the tree of knowledge, thus entering upon the path of evolution.