ndering Lapps, there is no room for the pretty tree and
decorative evergreens. The joy afforded these people at Yule-tide is
in the reunion of friends, in attending church services, in the
uniting of couples in marriage, and, alas, in the abundance of liquor
freely distributed during this season. The children are made happy by
being able to attend school, for at Christmas they are brought into
the settlements with friends for this purpose. They have only a few
weeks' schooling during the year, from Christmas to Easter, and while
the schoolmasters are stationed at the little towns, the children work
hard to gain the knowledge of books and religion which they crave.

In this terrible winter night of existence, amidst an appalling
darkness of Nature and Mind, the one great occasion of the year is
Christmas. Not the merry, bright, festive occasion of their more
favored brothers and sisters, but what to them is the happiest in the
year.

Christmas Eve passes unnoticed. The aurora may be even more beautiful
than usual, its waving draperies more fantastic, more gorgeous-hued,
but it is unnoticed by the Lapps who have seen it from childhood. Men,
women, children, servants, guests, and animals, crowd into the small,
low homes, without a thought of Santa Claus coming to visit them.
Children have no stockings to hang up, and there are no chimneys for
Santa to descend. In fact, he and his reindeer, with their loads of
treasured gifts, probably left this region with the sun, bound for
more congenial places.

The church bells break the terrible silence of the sunless towns on
Christmas morning, and as the fur-encased natives wend their way to
church, greeting one another as they meet, there is a faint approach
to joyousness. Of course there must be real sorrow and joy wherever
there is life and love, although among the Lapps it is hard to
discern.

During Yule-tide the Lapps visit one another, attend to what
governmental business there may be, give in marriage, christen the
children, and bury the dead, whose bodies have lain beneath their
covering of snow awaiting this annual visit of the Norwegian clergyman
for their final interment.

Think of Christmas without a tree, without wreaths and flowers,
without stockings full of gifts, with a dinner of reindeer meat and no
plum pudding! And imagine what would be his sensation could a Lapp
child be put into a home in England, America, Germany, or even in
other parts of Scandinavia!