Make a Holiday Wish Tree with Your Children

Start a New Holiday Tradition by Making a Tree full of Wishes

Dec 18, 2008
Kirsti A. Dyer

Wish Tree for Washington - © Cliff. Creative Commons.

A Wish Tree is a wonderful concept promoted by Peace Activist Yoko Ono. The idea of writing and sharing wishes is a meaningful tradition you can share with your children.

The concept of a wish tree is a wonderful tradition that can easily be started with children for the holidays or any day as a way of getting them to think and wish for others. A Holiday Wish Tree can be a simple as hanging wishes on a Christmas Tree to being a more formal tree for the community. You can even use the wish tree as a way of getting your children to wish on a global level.

About the Wish Tree

Peace-activist and artist, Yoko Ono has been showing different Wish Tree since the 1990's as an interactive art exhibit. People who visit her Wish Tree exhibits are invited to write their wishes on pieces of paper, hang them on the tree and whisper the wish to the bark of the tree.

The wishes may be for different things. Some of the wishes are very personal ones. Other wishes are more global ones with wishes for peace and better future for all of humankind.

How to Make a Holiday Wish Tree

For a simple holiday Wish Tree write, share and hang wish tags on a Christmas Tree.

For a more formal Wish Tree that can be used in the home, the workplace or the community, follow the directions given by Yoko Ono. You need:

Tree (or bush)
Pencils
Wish tags (use paper and string)
IMAGINE PEACE sign (See Yoko Ono Reference below)
Wish Tree Instructions

Let people write, share, and hang or tie their wishes on the Wish Tree.

Wish Tree Instructions

Yoko offers the following instructions for completing a wish tree in her "Wish Piece:"

Make a wish

Write it down on a piece of paper

Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree

Ask your friends to do the same

Keep wishing

Until the branches are covered with wishes

Yoko Ono

Create a Holiday Wish Tree

Follow the simple directions above to get started and then decide how you want to make your own holiday wish tree.

Some ideas for creating your own Holiday Wish Tree:

Encourage family members to only write wishes for someone else in the family.
Have family members write weekly wishes during the month of December.
Share the wishes on Christmas.
Collect each person's wishes and give them all of their own tags.
Have family members write wishes on a global level e.g. world peace, health for the planet, peaceful transitions
Organize a Wish Tree for your workplace or community and have people share their wishes.
Send your wishes to Yoko and have her put them in the Imagine Peace Tower.

More About the Wish Tree

Wish Trees are found in different cultures and different traditions with different reasons for creating the wish tree and different ways of making wishes, but all with the hopes that writing the wish or whispering the wish to the bark of a tree will make it come true.

Organizations and department stores have been using the concept of a Wish Tree for sometime. They hang the wishes of children on tags on a tree and encourage people to fulfill the wish of that child by purchasing the wished-for item on the tag.

Perhaps the best reason for creating a Holiday Wish Tree is to use to create a holiday tradition that can easily be started with children as a way of getting them to think about other things and other people and start making their wishes on a global level.