Olive Wood: Precious Wood for Precious Rosaries
Olive Wood Rosary, Traditionally Knotted
In our recent quest for handsome, affordable rosaries and Anglican prayer beads, let’s not neglect the olive tree. I first became acquainted with olive trees during a two-week business trip to Phoenix, Arizona. They’re not native to that area and are beginning to be regarded as interlopers due to their pollen production (which makes lots of people sneeze) and to the fact that they may be crowding out native species. But I have to say that in the xeriscaped landscape of the office where I was working, they provided welcome and beautiful shade. I learned that olives can’t ever be eaten right off the tree. They need to be processed first.
Olive trees figure prominently in both Jewish and early Christian tradition. The Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem was the site of various rites and ceremonies from the time of King Solomon. It was also the location of a large cemetary. Jesus spent a great deal of time preaching and teaching near the Mount of Olives, and of course it is the scene of the Garden of Gethsemane. The olive is mentioned over thirty times in Hebrew and Christian scripture beginning with the olive branch returned to Noah by the dove he had sent out to find dry land.
Olives were also revered and treasured by a diversity of ancient civilizations from the Egyptians to the Greeks. They retain their value today as sources of food and oil and have been cultivated in the New World since the 1600′s.
Olive trees live to be incredibly old, and there are olive trees at the Mount of Olives that were certainly alive in Jesus’ time. There are also very ancient trees in Italy, in Greece, in fact wherever olives are grown and valued. These ancient wonders continue to bear fruit year after year.
Small wonder that olive wood makes a treasured material for rosaries. The wood is a beautiful, pleasing red-blond in color, and most pieces have a handsome dark grain. While more expensive than some other woods, olive wood is certainly affordable by comparison with gemstones or other materials. It makes up beautifully in the old traditional knotted patterns. Olive wood beads and crosses are readily available on the Web, but be certain your wood comes from the prunings and trimmings of the trees. It’s far too valuable a plant to be hacked down, even for rosary beads.
