The Legend of the Christmas Spider

This comes from Merry Christmas from Valley Rural Electric Co-op, Inc., a 32 page booklet celebrating the Golden Anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's introduction of the signing of executive order 7057. The booklet is filled with crafts, decorations, recipes, stories and gift ideas. 

The Legend of the Spider 

Once upon a time, long ago on Christmas Eve, a mother and her children prepared their home for the visit of the Christ Child. Everything was scrubbed and cleaned, and when the tree was beautifully decorated, the family went to bed. While they were sleeping, the spiders, who had been chased from their favorite nooks and crannies, crept back to view the lovely preparations. They were filled with wonder at the tree's glittering beauty and crawled on every branch to see each shining ornament, but alas, after their inspection, the tree was shrouded with cobwebs. 

When the Christ Child came and saw what had happened, he smiled at the thought of the spider's wanting to see his tree and he blessed it as he touched each web to turn it into gold and the tree glistened with beauty even greater than before. 

This is how it happened that in so many parts of the world, it is a custom to have a spider web on every tree.

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Sparkly Spiderwebs

Materials:

2 silver tinsel pipe cleaners
silver thread
1 inch styrofoam balls
black pipe cleaner
black chenille bumps (small)
eyes (wiggle eyes or silver sequins

Directions:

Cut the tinsel pipe cleaners in half and space three of the pieces evenly apart to make the frame of the web. Tie with silver thread at the center to keep them in place. Then, using the silver thread, circle around the spokes, wrapping around each stem and tie at the last connection. About three or four concentric circles make it look like a spider web.
Cut the styrofoam ball in half, cover with black bumps and glue on eyes. Cut the black pipe cleaner into eight sec ions, insert into flat side of the spider's body, and bend feet to fasten to the spider web.