After lunch the girls and boys stay away from the Yule-tree. But how excited they are! For it is then that secret packages are heaped on the floor underneath the branches of the tree. Darkness comes early in the northern parts of these countries at Christmas time. In the far north the sun never shines at this time of the year. As early as three o’clock, Mother lights the tree and Father starts the Yule-log burning. Then all the family gather around the tree and the best fun of the day begins. Those children do not have to wait until Christmas morning to see their gifts. The packages are passed out as soon as the tree is lighted on Christmas Eve. Under the tree are presents for everybody—dolls, toy trains, books, knives, skates, sleds, skis, and candies and nuts and many, many other gifts too. After the gifts are unwrapped sometimes Father and Mother and the children and the servants join hands and sing carols around the tree. By that time the dinner is ready. And that dinner is one of the best of the year with fish, potatoes, peas, flat bread, sausages, ham, or maybe a goose, pudding, and cakes. The children are tired and ready for bed at an early hour. The next morning they are up early again. While it is quite dark they go to church for a Christmas service. Pretty Yule-trees stand beside the altar and the children carry gifts for the poor and place them beneath the Yule-trees. They sing songs, repeat their prayers, and listen to the pastor’s story of the Christ-child. Christmas Day is a quiet day in most of the homes in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. But after Christmas is over the merrymaking begins again. There are more feasts and parties. The children skate, and ski, and coast on their sleds as much as they please, for school is closed during the whole of the Yule season. 2. MID-SUMMER EVE American girls and boys sometimes dance around a Maypole and crown a queen on the first day of May. The girls and boys of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have a midsummer holiday when they too dance around a gaily decorated pole, but they are not celebrating the coming of May. They are greeting the long summer day. In the long ago people believed that June twenty-third was the day on which Odin, the sun god, won in the fight against the frost giants. So they danced and sang in praise of Odin. And people of those lands have kept up the old custom. [Illustration: DANCING AROUND THE MAYPOLE] The school children of one Swedish town were gay and happy on the twenty-third of June. The big boys set up a tall pole in a field near the schoolhouse. Then a crowd of girls and boys tied branches of fir, spruce, and pine on the pole. They put bright flowers among the green branches.