A Christmas Tree for the Forest Animals

At the edge of the forest there grew a small spruce that nobody wanted. It had grown crooked, because when it was tiny there was a stone in its way and it had had to grow round it sideways. And nobody takes a crooked tree home, as every tree by the roadside knows.

Every December people came with saws. They stopped, looked at the spruce, sometimes even tilted their heads — and walked on to look for a straight one. The spruce had got used to this and considered it perfectly all right, because whoever is still standing is at least still standing, and by January there were no straight ones left anywhere.

That winter the snow came early. It came so early that the birds had not managed to store anything and the mice were still going about between the fields. Then it stayed, and lay day after day, until the ground beneath it hardened like a board and could not be got into even with two paws.

The squirrel searched all morning in the three places where she had buried something in the autumn: under the root by the bench, beside the flat stone, and where the nettles grow in summer. In all three she found the same thing, which was snow, and under it ground that would not open.

In the evening she sat down under the crooked spruce, because there was less wind there and because you could see the lights of the village from it. «Tomorrow is the holiday,» she said to herself. «So the people say, anyway. And I don't even know what that is supposed to mean for us.»

«With people,» said the blackbird from above, «on a day like that they hang things on a tree. I've seen it often enough through the windows, when it's dark outside and bright in. They hang coloured balls, long chains and little lights, and then they all stand in front of it together and simply look. It really does look good. There's nothing to eat out of it, mind, but they look for a long time.»