A few days before Christmas the boy fell sick, and on Christmas morning
he lay motionless in bed, so that the poor parents thought the plague
had taken their child from them. The father wanted to bury the body at
once, but the mother showed him the rosy cheeks of the dead child, and
said that a death that looked so like sleep could do them no harm.
Thereupon she went into the little garden and cut box-tree leaves from
under the snow, and made a wreath for the dead darling. She placed the
wreath on his curly head and moved his bed into the middle of the room,
where she set candles burning around it, just as we do in quieter times
for a dear departed one. Then she went into the wood, cut down a small
Christmas-tree and placed it, all decorated with lights, nuts, and
bright tinsel, next to the coffin, in order that the dead child might
also have his Christmas pleasure.

This was the only Christmas-tree that the poor stricken town lit up!
People passing along the road looked with secret jealousy at the
illuminated window, wondering how they could still rejoice in such
bitter times. But no gladsome sounds from the window reached the
street, where flake after flake was whirling down from the gray heavens,
covering everything in its white cloak. And unceasingly, as flake after
flake sank down to earth, so in the little chamber the tears of the poor
woman rolled down her cheeks till the lights of the Christmas-tree
burned low, the fire in the stove died away, and sleep closed the
streaming eyes of the mother. Then all was quiet, very quiet, in the
little chamber.

* * * * *

But at the gates of Heaven it was very noisy that evening. Countless
hosts were crowding up the broad stairway, young and old, rich and poor: