THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE - A German Children's Tale of the Forest

By Henry Van Dyke

This is a folk tale of how the first Christmas tree came into being. It tells of our hero Winfried with his young companion stepping boldly into the pagan right of the passing into winter. He preaches the gospel of Christ and of Christ’s birth on that night; then from the heavens came a miracle that resulted in the salvation of the people. To celebrate, they brought new life or the Christmas tree into their homes.
In this short story of Christmas, we read of courage, generosity, and the triumph of light over darkness from The First Christmas Tree. This is a magical tale of the Thunder Oak and the false god Thor, to the lyrical story of The Christmas Angel in the Country Beyond the Stars.
From the time it was published it was destined to become a Christmas classic for the whole family.
10% of the publisher’s profit from the sale of this book will be donated to UNICEF.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was an American author, educator, and clergyman. He graduated from Princeton University, 1873, and from Princeton Theological Seminary, 1874 and served as a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923. In 1908-09 Dr. Van Dyke was an American lecturer at the University of Paris. By appointment of President Wilson he became Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honours.
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KEYWORDS/TAGS: Christmas, folklore, fairy tales, myths. Legends, childrens stories, children’s book, bedtime stories, fire side, winter, fable, parable, little, black, boy, Christ, Christmas tree, cloister, darkness, eyes, father, fire, forest, God, grandmother, great, Gregor, Gundhar, heart, heaven, hills, horses, Hunrad, listen, message, mighty, moon, night, nuns, oak, people, power, priest, Prince, river, sacred, sacrifice, sea, shining, silent, silver, sky, spear, stranger, Thor, thunderer, hammer, , travellers, white, wilderness, Winfried, winter, wither, wolves

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abela Publishing
• Release date: Jan 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9788829597994

Henry Van Dyke

Henry Van Dyke (1928–2011) was born in Allegan, Michigan, and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, where his parents were professors at Alabama State College. He served in the Army in occupied Germany, playing flute in the 427th Marching Band. There he abandoned his early ambition to become a concert pianist and began to write. In 1958, after attending the University of Michigan on the G.I. Bill and living in Ann Arbor, he moved to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Henry taught creative writing part-time at Kent State University from 1969 until his retirement in 1993, and was the author of four novels, including Blood of Strawberries, a sequel to Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes.

Book preview

The

First

Christmas Tree

A GERMAN CHILDREN’S STORY OF THE FOREST

By

Henry Van Dyke

Illustrated By

Howard Pyle

Originally Published By

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York

[1897]

Resurrected By

Abela Publishing, London

[2019]

The First Christmas Tree

Typographical arrangement of this edition

© Abela Publishing 2019

This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) except as permitted by law without the prior written permission

of the publisher.

Abela Publishing,

London

United Kingdom

ISBN-: 978-X-XXXXXX-XX-X

email:

[e-mail]

Website

Abela Publishing

ABELA: Zulu – to share or distribute

Acknowledgements

Abela Publishing

acknowledges the work that

Henry Van Dyke

and

Howard Pyle

did in creating and illustrating

The First Christmas Tree

in a time well before any electronic media was in use.

10% of the net profit from the sale of this book

will be donated to Charities.

So they took the little fir from its place

Table of Contents

I The Call of the Woodsman

II The Trail Through the Forest

III The Shadow of the Thunder-Oak

IV The Felling of the Tree

Illustrations

Photogravures from Original Drawings

by

Howard Pyle

So they took the little fir from its place…Frontispiece

The fields around lay bare to the moon

The sacred hammer of the God Thor

Then Winfried told the story of Bethlehem

I

The Call

of the

Woodsman

THE day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722.

Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the center of the aerial landscape of the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all,—a gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley.

In the cloister, too, there was silence at the sunset hour. All day long there had been a strange and joyful stir among