So she asked the oak, the pine and the fir, but they were so proud and stately they did not even hear her.
Then she asked the beautiful white birch that stood near by. “You have no work to do,” said the birch, “because you can never grow large enough. Perhaps you might be a Christmas tree, but that is all.”
“What is a Christmas tree?” asked the little spruce.
“I do not know exactly,” replied the birch. “Sometimes when the days are short and cold, and the ground is covered with snow, men come out here into the forest. They look at all the little spruce trees and choose the prettiest, saying, ‘This will do for a Christmas tree.’
“Then they chop it down and carry it away. What they do with it I cannot tell.”
The little spruce asked the rabbit that hopped over the snow, the owls that slept in the pines, and the squirrels that came to find nuts and acorns.
But no one knew more than the birch tree. No one could tell what men did with the Christmas trees.
Then the little spruce tree wept because she had no work to do and could not be of any use in the world.