4. The Golden Cobwebs

(A story to be told by the Christmas tree)

The night before Christmas the tree was all trimmed with pop-corn, and silver nuts, and golden apples, and oranges, and walnuts, and dolls, and bonbons, and a hundred colored candles. It was placed safely out of sight in a locked room where the children could not see it until the proper time. But ever so many other little house-folks had seen it. Pussy saw it with her great gray eyes. The house-dog saw it with his steady brown eyes. The yellow canary saw it with his wise bright eyes. Even the little mice had a good peek at it. But there was some one who had not seen the Christmas tree. It was the little gray spider! The housemother had swept and dusted and scrubbed to make everything clean for the Christ-Child’s birthday and every spider had scampered away. At last the little gray spider went to the Christ-Child, and said: “All the others see the Christmas tree, dear Christ-Child, but we are cleaned up! We like to see beautiful things too!” The Christ-Child was sorry for the little spider, and he said, “You shall see it.” So on Christmas morning before any of the children were awake, the spiders came creeping, creeping, creeping down the attic stairs, along the hall, under the door, and into the room where the Christmas tree was standing. Oh! it was beautiful to their little eyes as they looked upon it as much as they liked. Then father spider, mother spider, and all the spider family went creeping, creeping, creeping up the tree and all over its branches, and in great joy hurried back to their home in the attic. The Christ-Child looked down to see if the tree was all ready for the children, and oh!—it was all covered over with cobwebs! “How badly the housewife will feel at seeing those cobwebs!” said the Christ-Child. “I will change them into golden cobwebs for the beauty of the Christmas tree.” So that is how the Christmas tree came to have golden cobwebs.—Adapted from “How to Tell Stories to Children,” by Sara Cone Bryant.