Have you always wondered where the Christmas presents come from? Well,
I am going to tell you.
Of course, every one knows that Santa Claus brings them. He comes in
a sleigh, driving eight reindeer, and carries the presents down the
chimney in a pack on his back.
But where does _he_ get them? That is the question. And the answer
is,—in the garden of the Christmas Monks.
This garden is in a beautiful valley far away. But I must not tell you
the name of the valley, for if I did you would all want to go there to
live.
The Christmas Monks live in a stone castle covered with ivy and
evergreen vines. There are holly wreaths in every window, and over the
door is an arch, with “Merry Christmas” in evergreen letters.
The Christmas Monks wear white robes embroidered with gold, and they
never go without a Christmas wreath on their heads. Every morning they
sing a Christmas carol, and every evening they ring a Christmas chime
on the bells.
For dinner every day they have roast goose and plum pudding and mince
pie, and at night they set lighted candles in all of the windows.
But the best place of all is the garden, for that is where the
Christmas presents grow.
It is a very large garden and is divided into beds, just like our
vegetable gardens. Every spring the Monks go out to plow the ground and
plant the Christmas present seeds.
There is one big bed for rocking-horses, another for drums, and another
for sleds. The bed for the balls is not so large, and the top bed is
quite small, because tops do not need much room when they are growing.
The rocking-horse seed looks like tiny rocking-horses. The Monks drop
these seeds quite far apart, then they cover them up neatly with earth,
and put up a signpost with “Rocking-horses” on it in evergreen letters.
Just so with the penny-trumpet seed, and the toy-furniture seed, the
sled seed, and all the others.
Perhaps the prettiest part of the garden is the wax-doll bed. There are
other beds for the rag dolls and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls,
but, of course, wax dolls look much handsomer growing.
Wax dolls have to be planted very early in the season. The Monks sow
them in rows in April and they begin to come up by the middle of May.
First there is a glimmer of gold, or brown, or black hair. Then the
snowy foreheads appear, and the blue eyes and black eyes, and at last
all the pretty heads are out of the ground and nodding and smiling to
each other.
With their pink cheeks and bright eyes and curly hair, there is nothing
so pretty as these little wax-doll heads peeping out of the ground.
Slowly the dolls grow taller and taller, and by Christmas they are all
ready to gather. There they stand, swaying to and fro, their dresses
of pink or blue or white fluttering in the breeze.
Just about the prettiest sight in the world is the bed of wax dolls in
the garden of the Christmas Monks at Christmas time.