@Nico91 17 December 2022

In a remote village, on Christmas Eve, a boy went into the forest in search of an oak log to burn in the fireplace, as tradition dictated, on Holy Night. He was delayed longer than he had expected, and when darkness came he could not find his way back home. In addition, a heavy snow began to fall. The boy felt overwhelmed with dread and thought how in the previous months he had been looking forward to that Christmas, and now that it was only a few hours away, there was a possibility that he would never be able to celebrate it. In the forest, now bare of leaves, he saw a tree still green and took shelter under it from the snow. It was a fir tree. He stayed there for hours and, overwhelmed by great fatigue, fell asleep crouched at the feet of the trunk. The fir, excited, lowered its branches until they touched the ground to form a hut to protect the boy from the snow and cold. In the morning he awoke, heard in the distance the voices of the villagers who had gone in search of him, and, coming out of his shelter, was able with great joy to embrace his fellows. Only then did everyone realize the wonderful spectacle that had unfolded before their eyes. The snow that had fallen overnight, settling on the green branches, bent to the ground, had formed tinsel, crystal decorations that, in the sunlight, looked like sparkling lights of unprecedented splendor. In commemoration of this fact, the tree was adopted as the symbol of Christmas, and since then it has been decorated and lighted in all the houses, to reproduce the spectacle that the inhabitants of the little village saw on that distant winter's day.