Rumpelstiltskin | The Christmas Tree

Rumpelstiltskin:

Oh, how good it is that nobody knows! Just like the title of this fairy tale. For who, pray tell, is this completely over-the-top creature who suddenly appears, entirely uninvited, in the miller’s daughter’s dark chamber? Who, for heaven’s sake, transforms this dungeon into a stage of international calibre within seconds? Goodness, it’s right on the tip of your tongue.

But it’s also enough to drive a mouse mad: just when you’ve succeeded, everyone shouts ‘More!’ And so the beautiful miller’s daughter spins straw into gold and weeps, and spins, and weeps, and spins. The king – this Grimm-esque Scrooge McDuck – actually demands more and more. So, in her utter desperation, the miller’s daughter promises her firstborn to the lost little man who rushes to her rescue. It’s just a shame that nobody knows his name! Because without it, she’ll never see her little one again.

Will she get her child back in the end? Well, that depends entirely on how carefully the audience has studied the programme.

The Fir Tree

That fairy tale which has probably created the most famous literary monument to our Christmas tree: ‘The Fir Tree’. A fairy tale about a tree that longs for the future and, in doing so, misses out on the present – a story that takes on a whole new meaning in times of climate change.

Andersen tells the story of a career that could scarcely be recounted in harsher terms:

A young person who mistakes the world of appearances for reality, who trades the present for a promise and realises that the promise offers no way back. The applause dies down, the decorations are taken down, the tree is banished to the loft – only when it lies there, worn out and forgotten, does it realise what the forest was.

• Fairy tales for EVERYONE – suitable for ages 4 and over