Oskar, the Christmas Tree Elf: A Christmas to Remember

Chapter 8: Waiting for Santa

Half an hour later, everything was silent, and all through the house not a creature was stirring. Not even an...elf? Well, there was one elf who was stirring, the elf known as Oskar, and what he was stirring up was the Krupzer family Christmas traditions.

Dressed in her red flannel nightgown, Emma lay in bed until everyone was asleep. Unable to wait any longer, she picked up Gus from her bed, quietly opened her door, and peeked into the hallway. There was no one in sight, so she tiptoed down the hall, carefully avoiding the creaky floorboard and stretching to step over the loose section of the stairway. Upon reaching the front hall, she walked into the living room. Carefully, she closed the doors behind her so no one would see the light from the Christmas tree or hear her talking to Oskar.

In the fireplace, a few lingering embers provided a faint glow. Emma walked up to the darkened tree and turned it on to the lowest settings, just like Grandpa had taught her. Quietly, the tree returned to life, its lights shining dimly as it began to turn slowly in its stand. Emma sat down in front of the tree and set Gus on the floor beside her.

"Oskar," she called. "Are you there?"

"I'm up here!" he said, poking his head out between a pair of branches halfway up the tree. He jumped onto a branch, landing on his back and sliding down it, shifting his weight from side to side to avoid disturbing any ornaments in his path. As he slid off the branch and flew into Emma's lap, pieces of tinsel trailed behind him like the flames of a comet. Settling himself, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a pine nut, and began to eat.

"Would you like a pine nut?" he asked.

"No, thank you. I've had plenty to eat today already." Emma looked down at Oskar and examined him closely. "I've never seen an elf before. Where do you come from?"

"I was born in a forest in Northern Germany in 1517," Oskar replied. "That's almost 500 years ago. My parents were tree elves who, at the time, were caring for two large pine trees at the edge of the forest near the town of Tannenbaum. One spring, the seed of one of their trees fell into a nearby field and soon began to sprout into a sapling. Since many seedlings die before they mature into a tree, elves only adopt a tree once its roots have taken hold and it has reached a less vulnerable age, and when my parents realized that this tree was likely to grow up strong and healthy, they decided it was time to have a baby who could become the tree's guardian and take responsibility for it. And so, on Christmas day in 1517, I was born.

"We tree elves live very long lives and our bodies mature very slowly. We make a commitment to our trees for as long as they live. Within three years, my parents were already helping me care for my first tree. By then, it had grown to almost three feet tall. As the guardian of the tree, I was responsible for protecting and caring for it, for fostering its growth and nurturing its soul. My parents taught me to help birds build their nests, pointing out the best twigs and grasses to use and introducing me to the bird species that preferred to eat the insects most harmful to our trees. I learned to manage the weeds that grew beneath my tree and the lichen that grew on its north side. I even found out how to help old pine needles fall so that new, healthy ones would replace them. While I've discovered many more things since then, I still make use of these basic skills with every tree I care for.

"In the winter of 1521, a number of young trees were growing in the fields at the edge of the forest when some humans from the nearby town came to cut down some of the smallest and take them away. At the time, this created great confusion in the forest, as we didn't understand why men would cut down tiny trees with such little timber in them. You see, we didn't realize it was Christmas Eve because none of us had ever heard of Christmas before!"