German Christmas Spider Legend
Traditional Christmas Tree Ornaments

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One traditional ornament for a Christmas tree in Germany is a spider. You can easily make a beautiful bead and wire spider ornament for your own Christmas tree. Here is the legend of the ornament's origins:

The day before Christmas the mother of a family made a huge effort to get her home clean so it could be decorated and made ready to be blessed by the Christ child on Christmas. The spiders fled before the vigorous onslaught of the broom. They scurried away to hide up in the furthest reaches of the attic.

The house was cleaned and decorated with great care. A Christmas tree was brought in and arrayed with ornaments and decorations. That night, when the family had gone to bed, the spiders returned to the main rooms of house to see what the flurry of activity had been all about. They were delighted by the beauty of the home. The Christmas tree was the center of attention, however, and the spiders ran to the tree and danced throughout its branches so they could admire each and every one of the ornaments. Of course, to do this, the spiders had to spin their webs, so the tree was soon wrapped with strands of dull gray spider silk.

In the morning, the Christ child came to bless the house. The tree was beautiful to him, for after all, the spiders were among God's creatures, but he knew the mother, who had worked so hard to clean the house, was not likely to view the webs the same way. The Christ child touched the spider webs and they began to glisten and glimmer and turn to sparkling garlands of gold and silver.

In the morning, the entire family gathered about the Christmas tree and exclaimed that it had never looked so lovely! Only the mother knew that the sparkling strands were a true Christmas miracle and not some last-minute decoration. Since that time, it has been tradition to bedeck the tree with garlands and tinsel. While the mother still chases the spiders away for cleaning on Christmas Eve, she remembers and honors the Christmas miracle by hanging a spider ornament among the branches of the tree.

Sometimes the legend is writtten where Weihnachtsmann, or Father Christmas, changes the webs to sparkling strands, rather than the Christ Child, but the essential legend is the same. Merry Christmas!

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