On Christmas Eve, or the Good Night, as the Spanish children say, every one must go to the church for the midnight mass, and of course no one goes to bed before that. Early in the dusk the toy dealers bring their booths and flaming naphtha torches to the village plaza, and the children swarm around them like flies to sweets. All the week before groups of these children have been going from door to door at night singing to familiar tunes ballads which tell the story of the Nativity, and he is a poor Spaniard who cannot find some small coins for the band of singers. On Holy Night, too, after they have made the small round of the toy-dealers’ stands, they go to each other’s houses to look at the different nativities and sing one carol after another in which a single voice carries a verse, remembered or made up at the time, and the others join in the refrain while two of them dance. At the end of each verse the two whose turn it has been to dance go up to the nativity with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, open wide their little arms and fall on their knees, with the exclamation “For Thee.” In some places the children will instead carry a nativity into the plaza, singing carols in which every one joins. [Illustration: Woman with baby] One such carol is this lullaby:— “The Baby Child of Mary, Now cradle He has none; His father is a carpenter And he shall make Him one. _His father is a carpenter And he shall make Him one._ “The Lady, good St. Anna, The Lord, St. Joachim, They rock the Baby’s cradle That sleep may come to Him. _They rock the Baby’s cradle That sleep may come to Him._ “Then sleep thou, too, my baby, My little heart so dear; The Virgin is beside thee, The Son of God is near. _The Virgin is beside thee, The Son of God is near._” [Illustration: Decoration] A Christmas Tree in Japan It was a huge Christmas tree, the first that had ever grown in our compound,[1] for the children of our servants and writers and employees, who make up the number of our Legation population to close on two hundred. I could not have the tree on Christmas Day, owing to various engagements; so it was fixed for January 3, and was quite the most successful entertainment I ever gave!