When Lapland Babies Go to Church.
When Sunday morning comes, the Lapland father harnesses his reindeer to the sleigh. Father and mother wrap themselves in fur coats and put a fur coat on the baby, and away they go over the snow to church, it may be ten or even fifteen miles, for the reindeer can go a good deal faster than a horse.
But the old Lapland custom of caring for the babies while the grown people are in church, you never would guess. For as soon as the reindeer is made secure, the father Lapp shovels out a snug little bed in the snow, and when it is ready the mother Lapp wraps the baby snug and warm in skins and lays it down there. Then the father Lapp piles the snow around and over the baby, when they go into the church and leave the baby in the snow. So common is this that sometimes there are twenty or thirty babies, down to the little wee-est ones, buried in snow around the church.
You might think the babies would suffocate, but they do not, nor do they freeze. In fact, the snow does not make them cold. For when it covers anyone all over, if they have clothes enough on, so the snow will not melt and wet them, it will keep them warm. And as the little Lapland babies are not strong enough to knock the snow away and let in the cold, they just lie there safe and warm and go to sleep.
When church is out the father Lapp goes to the spot where his baby is, puts his hands down into the snow, pulls the baby our and shakes the snow off it; then the reindeer is unfastened, father and mother tuck themselves and the baby in the sleigh, and over the snow away they trot home again.—Written for Dew Drops by Adele E. Thompson.
MOTHER HULDA'S FEATHER BED.
How many children know what the boys and girls of far-off Norway sometimes think when they see the dainty, feathery snowflakes flying softly and silently through the air? I don't think there are many of you who do know, so I will tell you the story.
If we were there when they have the first snowstorm of the season we could hear them shouting gleefully to each other: “See! oh, see! Mother Hulda is shaking her feather bed.”