Fir-tree

There was once a bundle of matches, who were all extremely proud of their high descent, for their genealogical tree, that is to say, the tall fir-tree, from which each of them was a splinter, had been a tree of great antiquity, and distinguished by his height from all the other trees of the forest.

The swifts and the swallows told their feathered friends all about it, and they told others, both birds and animals, until at last it began to be rumored through all the animal world that on one day in the year the children of men were made wonderfully happy by means of some sort of a festival which they held about a fir-tree from the forest.