Translated from the German of Hans Wachenhusen.
CHRIST IS BORN.
"Really I take it unkindly of our pastor that he is continually speaking ill of us thorns, in the church yonder," said the thorn-bush, standing by a crumbling stable wall among the castle-ruins near the village church. "It is very unfair in him. How can he know, for instance, how the subject may affect me? On the bloody field of Golgotha, nearly two thousand years ago, there stood my ancestor, a buckthorn, of whose branches they wove our Saviour's crown. But the pastor yonder little thinks that I come of that same buckthorn; [Footnote 149] or that all its lineal descendants bear red blossoms and weep tears of blood on Christmas night; or that we thorns are ever renewed like Christ's teachings, being woven in with them?"
[Footnote 149: Kreuzdorn—Cross-thorn, literally.]
So spake the thorn-bush; and the wind blew through its branches, and shook them until the snow dropped off.
"Positively, this connection ought to be known!" sighed the thorn-bush.
But it was just then Christmas eve, and midnight was drawing near. Therefore did the thorn-bush make these pious reflections, which should have been cherished on other days too, if the lineage were really so wonderful as it fancied. Meantime the church-bells were ringing for the midnight mass, and the good priest passed by, going to the service of God.
"See, now, how indifferently he goes past me," said the thorn-bush. "And no wonder, since he knows nothing of my connections! And all the rest brush by me into the church; and if the Lord God could not see the things that are hidden, yet would he know his faithful by the footprints that lead from the houses to the church. But he knows them all, for he guides their steps. I know, though, two in the village who have not been to church to-day nor yet this whole year, for they are right godless men: the gloomy lord of our castle, and Wild Stephen, whom he turned out of his cottage yesterday because the rent was not paid. Here lie the poor wife and her half-naked children now in this ruined stable before which I stand guard. Really I must take a peep and see how the poor woman and her sick child are getting on," said the thorn-bush, and stretched up its bought to look in at the broken window.