Then comes the blessed Christmas night,
The bell is rung—and lo!
There stands the fir-tree, green and still,
Its branches all aglow.
Thou fir-tree in the forest dark,
Soon shalt thou hence be borne.
Rejoice! for then thy branches, too,
The Christ-child shall adorn.
In Scandinavia two fir boughs are nailed crosswise before the door on Christmas day. Children go about the village, knocking at the windows with fir twigs, and receiving gifts of sugar plums. The Alsatian peasantry relate that the apostle to the people on the Rhine and Moselle was the son of the widow of Nain. Long after his miraculous resurrection he was sent westward by Saint Peter. One day he came to the steep banks of the Rhine, and, stopping to rest, fell asleep from weariness, in the shade of a fir-tree. On awaking, he found that his pilgrim’s staff had grown into the trunk of the fir, and thus plainly indicated that he had reached the appointed end of his journey.