Christmas Stories ~ The legend of the Christmas Spider (version 1)

It was Christmas eve, in a small house on the edge of the village, a woman worked in preparation for the big day tomorrow.  She washed, swept and polished.  In the corner of the room sat crouched amongst the dust a family of spiders.  They watched the woman as she went about her work.  They watched as she dragged in a beautiful green tree in a pot.  They watched as she pushed it across the room and they watched in horror as she turned around and went to get her dustpan to sweep them up and take them out into the cold.  The hurried away to the safety of the attic and there they hid listening for the sounds of the house work.
When they heard the woman go up to bed, they crawled back down stairs to see the green tree covered in ornaments.  hey had never seen anything so beautiful and they climbed up the pot on to the branches.  Rushing from one ornament to another, they gazed in awe at the sparkling ornaments.
In the night, the Christ Child came to the house.  He was so touched to see the tree, but it was covered in a shroud of dusty grey cobwebs. How the woman would cry at the sight of it.  He knew that it had been prepared with love and so he reached out and touched it and at once the spiders webs glistened as they turned to threads of gold and silver.
And that so they say is why we have tinsel and a spider on our tree.