Christmas Spider ornament (Photo By Erika Smith – MSI Chicago – Christmas Around the World 2007 – Ukraine – spider web ornament, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37156527)
Dear Readers, the legend of the Christmas Spider is thought to come originally from Western Ukraine, and it goes like this.
Once upon a time, a poor but hardworking widow lived in a hut in the forest with her children. One day, a pine cone fell through the roof (as they do) and a fir tree started to grow in the middle of the hut. The children and the widow watered the tree, and were delighted to see the tree thrive but, as Christmas approached, they were sad because they had no money to buy decorations. When they awoke on Christmas morning, spiders had spun their webs all over the tree, and when the sunlight touched them, they were turned into silver and gold. Which was handy for the little family, who never suffered poverty again.
The End.
Some people believe that this story is the reason that we pop tinsel onto our trees, and other countries also claim the legend and make it their own – in some versions its Santa Claus or the Baby Jesus who are responsible for the transmutation of the webs into precious metals, and some versions are told from the perspective of the spider, though if I had all my hard work turned into something utterly useless to me (whoever caught a fly on a gold thread?) I think I’d be mightily fed up.
In Ukraine, little spider ornaments called pavuchky are placed on Christmas trees to bring luck.
The blog that this photo comes from is a lot of fun – the author is finding different national traditions to incorporate into their lives. Well worth a look! Although it seems to have finished a few years ago. It’s always sad when a blog suddenly ceases to exist. I used to avidly follow a literature blog called ‘The Dove Grey Reader’ a few years ago, and was bereft when that finished.Incidentally, good old Australia has, in addition to Christmas Beetles, an actual Christmas Spider – this is related to our common garden orb-weaver, but is rather more brightly coloured, and very varied.
Christmas Spider (Austracantha minax) Photo By Tumblingsky – Photographed in my garden using my Nikon D7000 camera, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23571962
Another Christmas Spider (Photo By Vicki Nunn – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13358386)
These are smallish spiders (growing to a maximum of 12mm long) but they are gregarious, and can build an aggregation of overlapping webs, which can be a bit of a pain if you’re trying to walk along a path and encounter the robust threads at head height. Australia does seem to be especially blessed in interesting invertebrates (and other animals) and is the only place where you’re going to find the Christmas Spider. I must make a visit one day!
Christmas spider web aggregation (fortunately not at head height) Photo By Simpsons fan 66 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6919692