The First Christmas Tree in the Forest Home
An Advent Story, Part 3
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Each Sunday in Advent I’m bringing you a segment of Peter Rosegger’s short story, “Der erste Christbaum in der Waldheimat,” translated here into English for the first time (as far as I’m aware). “Waldheimat” was the name Rosegger invented for the region of Styria from which he came; after he rose to fame as an author, it became widely adopted as a label for the area.
You can find Part 1 of the story here.
And Part 2 is here.
As we begin Part 3, our young narrator—in reality Rosegger himself, who included this story in memoirs of his youth—has returned home from his first year of university studies for the Christmas holiday. While away in the city, he had heard about a new Christmas tradition. So now he is determined to surprise his young brother, Little Nicky, with a Christmas tree. He has cut and prepared the tree and bought a sweet bun as a present. Almost everything is ready for Christmas Eve….
I arrived at home, and now I had gathered everything for the Christmas tree. That thought was just starting to warm my spirits when it occurred to me that something very important was still lacking: the candles. I had forgotten all about the tiny wax candles. Where could I get them?
Well, I just took some.
There’s a solution for pretty much everything in a farmhouse, but sometimes finding your way to it requires a little white lie—which isn’t hard to come up with. I went to Mother and asked if she wouldn’t lend me her red coil candle, the one she got at Mariazell. What for? she asked. That’s when I did it. I was going that night to midnight mass, I told her, where everyone in church had their lights, so I wanted to have one too. She reached right into her wardrobe, and I had the candle.
Evening fell. The farmhands were still busy in the stables, or in the bedchambers where, according to the custom on Christmas Eve, they were washing their hair and preparing their festive clothes. Mother was in the kitchen, baking the Christmas crullers, and Father was out blessing the farmyard with Little Nicky. He had glowing coals in a container, sprinkled some incense on top of them, and was making his way through all the rooms of the farm, through the stables, the barns, the pantries, and finally through every room of the house, from the sitting room to the bedrooms, filling them with smoke from the incense and praying silently all the while. Praying silently, Mother liked to say, is more effective than doing it loudly. And of course she was right, because it’s a prayer that arises from one’s thoughts and one’s feelings. Yes, and Little Nicky accompanied father carrying some holy water and the sprinkling brush. And just as Father blessed the rooms with the smoke, the little boy did it by sprinkling the water. In this way evil spirits would be driven off, while good ones entered the house with a blessing. These are ancient customs, now given a holy meaning. The old Germanic pagans, at the end of the year, celebrated their churlish, sensual nights; we have made of them churchly, incensual nights.
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Just a few years earlier it had been my job to help Father with this priestly office. Now my little brother was doing it, and certainly with the reverential devotion that befits the mysteries of this night.
So while everyone else was busy outside, I prepared the Christmas tree in the living room. I stood the little tree, secured firmly in its wooden base, upon the table. Then I cut ten or twelve small candles from the longer coil candle and stuck them to the tiny branches. That caused me some difficulties, because several of them didn’t want to stay stuck and kept falling off. Oh, I would have loved to be patient, in order to do everything in an orderly fashion. But at any moment the door could spring open and someone could come in before I was ready. My hands trembled, and the candles made use of my haste to tease me a bit. Finally, however, they grew devoutly submissive—as Christmas tree candles should!—and held fast to their places. And a good thing, too. Beneath them, at the foot of the little tree, I placed the sweet roll.
Just then, above the room, I heard footsteps in the attic—slow ones, and quickly skipping ones. They were already there, blessing the loft. Soon they would be in the living room, where we were accustomed to conclude our circuit with the incense. I lit the candles and hid myself behind the oven. It was still quiet. From my hiding place, I gazed upon the luminous wonder, the likes of which had never been seen in this room before. The little lights upon the tree were burning so quietly, so solemnly—as if they were silently entrusting me with their heavenly secrets. But then it suddenly struck me—what if they burned down before the people came! How could I prevent that? How could I call them all together? What I fool I was! Everything could go completely wrong. Playing the Christ Child is not nearly as easy as one supposes.
Finally I heard at the threshold the tapping of Father’s wooden shoes—whenever we heard those shoes, we always knew it was Father. The door opened. They stepped inside with their vessels for the blessing. And they stood still.
“What is that?!” asked Father in a soft, drawn-out voice. The little boy stared speechlessly inside. In his huge, round eyes, the lights of the Christmas tree were reflected like little stars. Father stepped slowly to the kitchen door and whispered through it: “Mother! — Mother! Come inside a bit.” And when she was there: “Mother, did you do that?”
“Mary and Joseph!” whispered Mother. “What is all that there on the table?” Soon the menservants and maidservants came by also, startled by the strange thing that had appeared there. Then one of them, a young man who came from the valley, made a guess: it might be a Christmas tree. Was it really true, then, that angels brought little trees like this from heaven? They looked, and they marveled. And out of Father’s vessel rose clouds of smoke from the incense, filling up the whole room like a delicate veil that laid itself upon the small, burning tree.
Mother peered around the room: “But where’s Peter?”
“Aha,” said Father, “now, now I’ve finally got a hunch about who did all this.”
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I’ll be back next Sunday with Part Four, and we’ll see the conclusion of Peter and Nicky’s Christmas celebration! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time for another installment From My Bookshelf.