Lordings, listen to our lay—
We have come from far away
To seek Christmas;
In this mansion we are told
He his yearly feast doth hold:
’Tis to-day!
May joy come from God above,
To all those who Christmas love.
Where the Christmas Toys Come From
Almost all the wooden toys come from Germany, where peasants in the mountains of the Tyrol and Bavaria still make them by hand. A herd-boy on the hillside will see that his cattle are safely feeding in a narrow valley which they cannot leave without passing him, and then he will sit on the grass or on a rock and whittle and whistle or jodel as the soft wood shapes itself in his fingers, through a long summer day. And during the winter, while the snow lies deep on the mountain paths, entire families give their time to making Noah’s arks, toy villages with stiff little green trees, toy furniture, carved figures of all kinds. Anything which a man’s knife can make from poplar or plane wood is carved during the long weeks when outdoor work is impossible. At one time whole German villages used to work in their own homes on cheap wooden toys of all kinds. Nowadays, since the invention of the machines by which the simpler forms are made, most of the toy trades have been swept into the factories of German cities.