Among all the older peoples of Europe there are many bits of folk stories which tell of the wonderful peace which fell upon the world on the night of the Holy Eve. A Bosnian legend says that at the time of the birth of Christ “the sun in the east bowed down, the stars stood still, the mountains and the forests shook and touched the earth with their summits, and the green pine tree bent, ... the grass was beflowered with opening blossoms, incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, birds sang on the mountain top, and all gave thanks to the great God.” This belief in the holy and gracious kinship of all nature at this season finds expression in many countries in an added tenderness for all living things during Yuletide. The very sparrows, whose nests the boys are free to raid at any other time, have a sheaf of rye set up for their Christmas feast, says Mr. Riis, who tells that once, stranded in a Michigan town, he was wandering about the streets and came upon such a sheaf raised upon a pole in a dooryard. “I knew at once,” he says, “that one of my people lived in that house and kept Yule in the old way. So I felt as if I were not quite a stranger.”
In England, robins are the birds of Christmas time; an old legend has it that on the day of Christ’s suffering the robin fluttered beside Him, and in trying to pluck thorns from His crown stained its breast crimson.
So ever when the snow comes round
To crown the wintry year,
Perched high upon the holly bough
Red Robin warbles clear.
No other songster on the spray
At Christmas time is heard,
But when the Saviour’s birth we keep,
We hear the Saviour’s bird.