This is a very old book. It was written for children aged 4 to 8. It has been enjoyed by this adult for many years.

The story begins with Tante (Auntie in German) getting ready for Christmas. First she cleans her little cottage. Then she takes her axe “from its peg in the barn” and she saddles up her donkey. Together they go off to the forest to “fetch Christmas”.  After that, a number of other things happen, but I have always liked the fetching Christmas part.

Last Saturday (while hubby attended a Christmas choir), I fetched Christmas with Ryan and Liz, my son and d-i-l. We didn’t have a donkey so we drove in their 4×4 truck over the snowy roads into the forest. We didn’t take an axe. Instead, my son brought a small saw.

We met up with five of their friends and walked the trails until we each found the perfect Christmas tree. Ryan and Liz chose a spruce. I chose a Jack Pine.

Back home, Ryan set up the tree and I decorated it.

In Tante’s story, she sets up her tree, bakes cookies and hangs them on the tree, along with some shiny apples. Then she invites all the village children to her cottage to celebrate and eat cookies. After that, everyone goes home and Tante falls asleep.

During the night, Christkindel shows up and the spiders meet him outside the cottage. They were all swept out with Tante’s earlier cleaning and they really want to see the Christmas tree. So Christkindel lets them inside for a peek.

In their excitement to look at the tree, they crawl all over it and leave behind a lot of sticky spider webs. When Christkindel returns to check on the spiders, he sees the mess and decides to fix it by changing the webs into strands of silver and gold, thus inventing tinsel, and making Tante quite happy to see this when she wakes the next morning.

Liz’s mom made these Christmas spiders.

This is an ornament Ryan made when he was in grade four. It consists of a pine cone, an acorn, some fabric, a feather and a bunch of creativity.  It reminds me of Tante.

How do you fetch Christmas?