Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/177

 Rh are to be found tiny trees, with two or three bits of taper stuck on, and a few ornaments of coloured paper and tinsel, which are eagerly bought by those who cannot afford anything better. The lights of the Christmas-tree shine as far as the German tongue is spoken, from the east of Prussia to Alsatia, from the Baltic and the German Ocean to the south of the Danube. The custom has even been introduced into the Protestant church-service. In the mountainous tracts of Saxony, and in other districts, a Christmas-tree ablaze with lights is placed on the altar during the Christmas-service, which is celebrated at six o'clock on Christmas-morning. Everyone attending service brings a candle or small lanthorn, until, when the church is full, the whole interior is one flood of light.

Wherever in modern German literature we find a description of Christmas, everything centres around the Christmas-tree.

In a small ballad Carl Bleibtreu has described the celebration of Christmas among the Germans of the Foreign Legion in the trenches before Sebastopol, during the Crimean war. The lights of the fir-tree blaze up, and their brightness becomes a target for the Russian artillery, so that in a few minutes all the merry warriors lie prostrated by the deadly shell. In Herrmann Bahr's Die neuen Menschen (The new Men), the Christmas-tree is used as a symbol of man's affection for the old customs of childhood. And in Gerhard Hauptmann's Friedensfest (The Festival of Peace) it is the token of peace, which two blessed women, mother and daughter, carry into a family which has been at war within itself and with the world.

How typical the Christmas-tree is for German Christmas is illustrated by Sidney Whitman, who uses it in that sense, in his article on the German and the British workman.

But, for all that, not every home, not every family in Germany knows it. In the German Empire we find large districts where it is not customary or even known. In