Speaker 1: The golden cobwebs a tail for small children. I am
going to tell you a story about something wonderful that
happened to a Christmas tree like this, ever and ever
so long ago, when it was once upon a time
it was before Christmas, and the tree was all trimmed
with popcorn and silver nuts, and named the trimmings of
the tree before you, and stood safely out of sight
in a room where the doors were locked, so that
the children should not see it before it was time.
But ever so many other little house people had seen it.
The big black pussy saw it with her great green eyes.
The little gray kitty saw it with her little blue eyes.
The kind house dog saw it with his steady brown eyes.
The yellow canary saw it with his wise bright eyes.
Even the wee wee mice that were so afraid of
the cat had peeped one peak when no one was by.
But there was some one who hadn't seen the Christmas tree.
It was the little gray spider, you see. The spiders
lived in the corners, the warm corners of the sunny
attic and the dark corners of the nice cellar, and
they were expecting to see the Christmas tree as much
as anybody. But just before Christmas, a great cleaning up
began in the house. The house mother came sweeping and
dusting and wiping and scrubbing to make everything grand and
clean for the christ Child's birthday. Her broom went into
all the corners, poke, poke, and of course the spiders
had to run. Dear, dear, how the spiders had to run.
Not one could stay in the house while the Christmas
cleanness lasted. So you see, they couldn't see the Christmas tree.
Spiders liked to know all about everything and see all
there is to see, and they were very sad. So
at last they went to the christ Child and told
him all about it. All the others see the Christmas tree,
Dear christ Child, they said, but we, who are so
domestic and so fond of beautiful things, we are cleaned up.
We cannot see it at all. The christ Child was
very sorry for the little spiders when he heard this,
and he said they should see the Christmas tree. The
day before Christmas, when nobody was noticing, he let them
all go in to look as long as ever they liked.
They came creepy, creepy down the attic stairs, creepy creepy
up the cellar stairs, creepy creepy along the halls and
into the beautiful room. The fat mother spiders and the
old Papa spiders were there, and all the little teeny
dnty curly spiders, the baby ones. And then they looked
round and round the tree. They crawled and looked and
looked and looked. Oh what a good time they had.
They thought it was perfectly beautiful. And when they looked
at everything they could see from the floor, they started
up the tree to see some more. All over the
tree they ran creepy crawley, looking at every single thing,
up and down, in and out, over every branch and twig.
The little spiders ran and saw every one of the
pretty things right up close. They stayed until they had
seen all there was to see, you may be sure,
and then they went away at last, quite happy. Then,
in the still dark night before Christmas Day, the dear
christ Child came to bless the tree for the children.
But when he looked at it, what do you suppose?
It was covered with cobwebs. Everywhere the little spiders had been,
they had left a spider web, And you know, they
had been just everywhere, so the tree was covered from
its trunk to its tip with spider webs, all hanging
from the branches and looped around the twigs. It was
a strange sight. What could the christ Child do? He
knew that house mothers do not like cobwebs. It would
never never do to have a Christmas tree covered with those. No. Indeed,
so the dear christ Child touched the spiders webs and
turned them all to gold. Wasn't that a lovely trimming?
They shone and shone all over the beautiful tree. And
that is the way the Christmas tree came to have
golden cobwebs on it. End of the Golden Cobwebs by
Robert Haven Schuffler