Long, long ago—so long that even the old gray hills have forgotten—the beautiful stars in the sky used to sing together very early every morning, before any of the little people of the world were up. Their songs were made of light, and were so clear and strong that the whole heaven would shine when they sang.
One morning, as the stars sang and listened to each other, they heard beautiful music coming swiftly toward them. It was so much louder and sweeter than their own that they all stopped and listened and wondered. It came from far above them, from out the very deepest blue of the sky. It was a new star, and it sang an entirely new song that no one had ever heard before.
“Hark, hark!” the stars cried. “Let us hear what it is saying.”
And the beautiful star sang it over and over again, and its song told of a lovely Babe that had come on earth—a Babe so beautiful that it was the joy of the whole world. Yes, so beautiful that when you looked at it you saw real light streaming from its face.
Every little child in the world has light in its face if we but know how to see it; but this little one had so very much that its mother wondered as she looked down upon her lap and saw it there. And there were shepherds there to look at the Babe, and many other people saw it and could not understand.
But the one beautiful star knew—yes, it knew all about it; and what do you think it knew? Why, that this Child was God’s own Child, and was so good and loving that the whole world when it heard of it would want to know how to be so, too.
This one beautiful star traveled on and on, telling all the way what it knew of the Child, and its light fairly danced through the sky, and hung over the very place where the little one lay.
THE STRANGER CHILD[7]
FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT
(Translated from the German by Frances Jenkins Olcott)
’Twas Christmas Eve and, birdlike over the snow, flew a little stranger child. It ran along the sparkling ground. Its face beamed with gladness. It listened to the merry chimes of the Christmas bells and clapped its hands for joy.
It frolicked in the bright beams of light that fell from a cottage window, and, peeping in, saw the Christmas tree hung full of shining light and glittering gifts, and it watched the little children play about the tree.