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|264| In Germany the Christmas-tree is not a luxury for well-to-do
people as in England, but a necessity, the very centre of the festival;
no one is too poor or too lonely to have one. There is something about a
German _Weihnachtsbaum_--a romance and a wonder--that English
Christmas-trees do not possess. For one thing, perhaps, in a land of
forests the tree seems more in place; it is a kind of sacrament linking
mankind to the mysteries of the woodland. Again the German tree is simply
a thing of beauty and radiance; no utilitarian presents hang from its
boughs--they are laid apart on a table--and the tree is purely splendour
for splendour's sake. However tawdry it may look by day, at night it is a
true thing of wonder, shining with countless lights and glittering
ornaments, with fruit of gold and shimmering festoons of silver. Then
there is the solemnity with which it is surrounded; the long secret
preparations behind the closed doors, and, when Christmas Eve arrives,
the sudden revelation of hidden glory. The Germans have quite a religious
feeling for their _Weihnachtsbaum_, coming down, one may fancy, from some
dim ancestral worship of the trees of the wood.
As Christmas draws near the market-place in a German town is filled with
a miniature forest of firs; the trees are sold by old women in quaint
costumes, and the shop-windows are full of candles and ornaments to deck
them.
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