Hans: Did you come in an airship?
Swiss child: No; the Christmas fairy brought me. What a beautiful tree!
Hans: Yes; it’s our Christmas tree. Don’t you have one? Doesn’t St. Nicholas bring you presents?
Swiss child: No; the Christmas Lady[10] comes to us. She wears a white gown and a red cap, and she carries a basket of toys on her back. But only good children get toys. She brings a switch for the bad ones, and they must keep it all the year and get whipped whenever they are naughty!
Gretchen: I’m so glad St. Nicholas has a wife to help him. It would be so hard for him to get along by himself. Let’s sing a little till the other children come.
(They dance slowly around the tree, singing. While they are singing, a hard clacking of wooden shoes is heard at the door. The children stop to listen, and a little Dutch girl enters. She carries a wand with a star on the end and has a basket of sweetmeats on her arm.)
Gretchen (coming to greet her): Here is our little neighbor. I’m so glad you have come. Do the children in Holland have a Christmas Eve like ours?
Dutch child: We don’t have a pretty tree like that, and we don’t hang our stockings before the fire. Good St. Nicholas comes to visit us in the evening. He brings toys for the good children and a big birch rod for the naughty ones. When he comes in, every one joins in this song of welcome:
Welcome, good St. Nicholas, welcome,
Bring no rod for us to-night;
While our voices bid thee welcome,
Every heart with joy is light.
Then we recite verses and play games for a while. As St. Nicholas goes away he scatters sweetmeats on the floor. We children scramble for them and try to fill our baskets. Then, after he has gone away, we all go into another room and put our shoes on a table. We always put a bit of hay in each shoe for St. Nicholas’s good old horse, Sleipner.