Tell Me Another Story: The Book of Story Programs

by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

"Christopher and his little brothers and sisters wear skins for clothing. They sleep, like wolves, on beds of pine and moss!" they said, too, and then they ran away when they saw Christopher coming out.

He was as roughly dressed as one of the baby bears whom he knew in the Göinge Forest and for whom he gathered wild honey; or as shy as one of the little red foxes that had no home save a hollow tree. All his life he had been hungry, and starved, and scorned. But Christopher was known by all of the Forest as loving and gentle and unselfish.

Beggar Mother neither baked nor brewed, but when she went her way down to the village from door to door with all her little ones clinging to her skirts, the villagers would sometimes give her six brown loaves, one for each of her children.

Then Christopher would creep out of the cave and break his bread to give some crumbs to the starlings, the finches, and the baby squirrels. He knew where the wild strawberries grew, and he gathered them for his mother. He pulled grass and leaves for the wild hares. He had once lifted Mother Fox from her trap and sent her back to her babies. He brought spring water from the rocks for the flowers, and never frightened the owls or caught the butterflies.

But the Göinge Forest was cold and asleep now, for it was Christmas time.

Christopher knew that it was now Christmas Eve for he had been to the village and looked in the doors. Lighted candles were being set in the windows. Great pieces of bread and meat were being placed on the tables, and bunches of grain thick with seeds were hung in the gardens to be a Christmas feast for the birds.

But when the villagers saw Christopher from the cave in the Forest looking in their doors, they slammed them shut, for they knew him only as the child of Beggar Mother. They had no room for him on Christmas Eve.

So Christopher walked alone and he came, through the snow, to the little church on the edge of the Göinge Forest. Brother Anselmo tended the church. He had arranged the little crèche, which was like the stable where the Holy Child lay on the first Christmas Eve. There was the manger, the gilt star suspended over it, and the toy cattle that Brother Anselmo had carved from wood with his own hands. He had trimmed the church with greens. Now, Brother Anselmo was ready to ring the bell, but he had not the strength. He was a very old man and the bell was heavy. The rope was stiff with ice, and snow blinded him in the belfry.

Christopher knew Brother Anselmo very well. In the summer he helped him tend his garden of herbs, and in the winter he brought him fagots. With his bare feet Christopher climbed up to the belfry. With his little hands he pulled with all his might at the frozen bell rope. Then the bell rang out more sweetly than ever before to tell the village and the Forest that it was Christmas Eve.

But a strange thing happened. As Christopher rang the Christmas bell once, the trees in the Forest covered themselves with green leaves, and the ground was no longer bare, but bright with flowers. A flock of starlings flew to the top of a fir tree and stopped there, singing. Their feathers glittered with gold and red like jewels, for they were Paradise starlings.