The tree's perspective on Christmas
Hans Christian Andersen, The Fir Tree
In this story, the great Danish fairy-tale writer imagines what Christmas looks like from the perspective of the tree that's been uprooted, lovingly decorated, and then danced and sung around. As the household goes to sleep, the contented tree is sure that the next morning will be a joyful repeat of the festivities, with itself at the centre again....
All night long the tree stood silent as it dreamed its dreams, and next morning the butler and the maid came in with their dusters.
"Now my splendor will be renewed," the fir tree thought. But they dragged it upstairs to the garret, and there they left it in a dark corner where no daylight ever came. "What's the meaning of this?" the tree wondered. "What am I going to do here? What stories shall I hear?" It leaned against the wall, lost in dreams. It had plenty of time for dreaming, as the days and the nights went by. Nobody came to the garret. And when at last someone did come, it was only to put many big boxes away in the corner. The tree was quite hidden. One might think it had been entirely forgotten.
"It's still winter outside," the tree thought. "The earth is too hard and covered with snow for them to plant me now. I must have been put here for shelter until springtime comes. How thoughtful of them! How good people are! Only, I wish it weren't so dark here, and so very, very lonely. There's not even a little hare. It was so friendly out in the woods when the snow was on the ground and the hare came hopping along. Yes, he was friendly even when he jumped right over me, though I did not think so then. Here it's all so terribly lonely."
"Squeak, squeak!" said a little mouse just then. He crept across the floor, and another one followed him. They sniffed the fir tree, and rustled in and out among its branches.
"It is fearfully cold," one of them said. "Except for that, it would be very nice here, wouldn't it, you old fir tree?"
"I'm not at all old," said the fir tree. "Many trees are much older than I am."
"Where did you come from?" the mice asked him. "And what do you know?" They were most inquisitive creatures.
"Tell us about the most beautiful place in the world. Have you been there? Were you ever in the larder, where there are cheeses on shelves and hams that hang from the rafters? It's the place where you can dance upon tallow candles-where you can dart in thin and squeeze out fat."
"I know nothing of that place," said the tree. "But I know the woods where the sun shines and the little birds sing." Then it told them about its youth. The little mice had never heard the like of it. They listened very intently, and said, "My! How much you have seen! And how happy it must have made you."
"I?" the fir tree thought about it. "Yes, those days were rather amusing." And he went on to tell them about Christmas Eve, when it was decked out with candies and candles.
"Oh," said the little mice, "how lucky you have been, you old fir tree!"
"I am not at all old," it insisted. "I came out of the woods just this winter, and I'm really in the prime of life, though at the moment my growth is suspended."
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Alone up in the dark attic, the tree feels sad, but resolves: "I will take good care to enjoy myself, once they let me out of here."
********************************************
When would that be? Well, it came to pass on a morning when people came up to clean out the garret. The boxes were moved, the tree was pulled out and thrown-thrown hard-on the floor. But a servant dragged it at once to the stairway, where there was daylight again.
"Now my life will start all over," the tree thought. It felt the fresh air and the first sunbeam strike it as if it came out into the courtyard. This all happened so quickly and there was so much going around it, that the tree forgot to give even a glance at itself. The courtyard adjoined a garden, where flowers were blooming. Great masses of fragrant roses hung over the picket fence. The linden trees were in blossom, and between them the swallows skimmed past, calling, "Tilira-lira-lee, my love's come back to me." But it was not the fir tree of whom they spoke.
"Now I shall live again," it rejoiced, and tried to stretch out its branches. Alas, they were withered, and brown, and brittle. It was tossed into a corner, among weeds and nettles. But the gold star that was still tied to its top sparkled bravely in the sunlight.
Several of the merry children, who had danced around the tree and taken such pleasure in it at Christmas, were playing in the courtyard. One of the youngest seized upon it and tore off the tinsel star.
"Look what is still hanging on that ugly old Christmas tree," the child said, and stamped upon the branches until they cracked beneath his shoes.
The tree saw the beautiful flowers blooming freshly in the garden. It saw itself, and wished that they had left it in the darkest corner of the garret. It thought of its own young days in the deep woods, and of the merry Christmas Eve, and of the little mice who had been so pleased when it told them the story of Humpty-Dumpty.
"My days are over and past," said the poor tree. "Why didn't I enjoy them while I could? Now they are gone-all gone."
A servant came and chopped the tree into little pieces. These heaped together quite high. The wood blazed beautifully under the big copper kettle, and the fir tree moaned so deeply that each groan sounded like a muffled shot. That's why the children who were playing near-by ran to make a circle around the flames, staring into the fire and crying, "Pif! Paf!" But as each groans burst from it, the tree thought of a bright summer day in the woods, or a starlit winter night. It thought of Christmas Eve and thought of Humpty-Dumpty, which was the only story it ever heard and knew how to tell. And so the tree was burned completely away.
The children played on in the courtyard. The youngest child wore on his breast the gold star that had topped the tree on its happiest night of all. But that was no more, and the tree was no more, and there's no more to my story. No more, nothing more. All stories come to an end.
Translation by Jean Hersholt
https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheFirTree_e.html
About the author
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) was a Danish writer who is most famous for his fairy tales, including 'The Little Mermaid,' 'The Snow Queen,' 'The Ugly Duckling,' and 'The Emperor's New Clothes'. He also wrote plays, novels, poems, and stories.
What We Love About This Passage...
Andersen refuses a happy ending: the tree dies, its simple faith in humanity unredeemed.
This 19th-century story feels as if it had been written today, as a strong plea to us to look after our environment. It's a reminder that this was the age when the word 'ecology' was first coined, and people were already starting to worry about the harm that human life does to the earth.
Readers only familiar with Andersen's fairy tales through Disney's The Little Mermaid may be shocked at the unflinching conclusion of 'The Fir Tree'. A beautiful film version was made in 2011 that remains faithful to the story up until the final moments, when it shows a close-up of a pine cone that has been saved from the burning tree--a glimmer of hope that Andersen's austere original does not provide.
Which ending do you prefer?
To Read Alongside...
Another classic 19th-century work that features trees being destroyed is Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard.
E.M. Forster wrote a story called 'Other Kingdom' that is indebted to Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which a woman vanishes into a forest, fleeing an unhappy relationship and becoming one with the 'other kingdom' of the trees.
More recently, Richard Powers's novel The Overstory foregrounds trees as main characters, competing with the human characters for our attention as we follow their extraordinary stories. And Stories of Trees, Woods, and the Forest, edited by Fiona Stafford (who also wrote The Long, Long Life of Trees), contains a delightful and thought-provoking range of arboreal stories by Ovid, Jane Austen, D.H. Lawrence, Washington Irving, Daphne du Maurier, Eudora Welty, Tove Jansson, the Brothers Grimm, Angela Carter, R.K. Narayan, and many others.
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