A Spider for Christmas
An old European Christmas legend tells of a poor woman unable to provide the traditional decorations for the special holiday
A spider made his home in her tree and began to spin beautiful webs.
On Christmas morning, the first light of the sun struck the cobwebs, turning them to silver
When the woman awoke, she found the tree was covered with silver treasure
The spider had brought good fortune
Here's another version I heard:
One Christmas Eve long ago, a mother busily cleaned her house in preparation for the next day’s celebration. The cleaning, of course, included dusting for cobwebs so the spiders living in the house were banished to the far corners of the attic. The Christmas tree was to be a surprise, so after the children of the house were asleep, the mother carefully decorated the tree which was placed where the children would see it first thing in the morning. When the house was dark for the night, the spiders left their hiding places, and when they saw the beautiful tree, they began creeping from one branch to the other, spinning their webs, until the entire tree was covered. When Santa Claus arrived in the morning and saw what had happened, he was afraid the mother would be disappointed after she had worked so hard to decorate the tree, so he used his magic to turn the webs to shimmering silver and gold. Thus the tradition began to decorate the tree with glittering silver and gold, and to include a spider for good luck.
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