These are pictures of a Tanabata tree at my school. This tree was decorated by the special-needs students and I thought they did an exceptional job. They decorated the tree for a special Japanese summer holiday, the legend of which I will now transcribe. ;) ...
This is a tale of long and long ago, when the King of the Sky was still busy making stars to hang in the heavens at night. The king had a very beautiful daughter. She was called Weaving Princess because she sat at her loom all day long every day. She wove the most delicate stuff in the world. It was so light and airy, so thin and smooth, that it was hung among the stars in the sky and draped toward the earth. It is this cloth that we now call clouds and fog and mist.
The King of the Sky was very proud of his daughter because she could weave so beautifully and was such a help to him. He was very busy making the sky, you see, and needed all the help he could get. But one day he noticed that Weaving Princess was becoming pale.
"Well, well, my little princess," the king said, "you've been working too hard I fear. So tomorrow you must take a holiday. Go out and play among the stars all day long. The please hurry back and help me. I still need much more mist and fog, and many more clouds."
The princess was very happy to have a holiday. She'd always wanted to go and wade in the stream, called the Milky Way, that flowed through the sky. But she'd never had time before.
She put on her prettiest clothes and ran out among the stars, right over to the Milky Way. And there, in the middle of the stream, she saw a handsome boy washing a cow in the water.
"Hello," the boy said to the princess, "who are you?"
"I'm the star Vega," she answered. "But everyone calls me Weaving Princess."
"I'm the star Alitar," said the boy. "But everyone calls me Herdboy because I tend the cows that belong to the King of the Sky. I live over there on the other side of the Milky Way. Won't you come over to my house and play with me?"
So the herboy put the princess on the back of the cow and led her across the stream to his house. They playd all sorts of wonderful games and had so much fun that the princess forgot all about going home to help her father.
The King of the Sky became very worried when the princess failed to come home. He sent a magpie as his messenger to find her and tell her to come home. But when the magpie spoke to the princess she was having such fun that she wouln't even listen. Finally the king had to go himself and bring the princess home.
"You've been a very bad girl," the king said. "Just look at the sky-not even finished yet. You've been away playing and the sky needs clouds and mist and fog. So you can never have another holiday. You must stay here and weave all the time."
Then the king poured more and more star water into the Milky Way. Until now it had been a shallow stream that you could wade across, but the king poured in so much star water that it became a deep, deep river. The princess and the hearboy lived on opposite sides of the river, so now there was no way they could get across to each other.
The princess went into her little house in the sky and sat in front of her loom, but she was so lonely and longed so much for her Herdboy that she couldn't weave at all. Instead she just sat there weeping all the time. And the sky became emptier and emptier, with no clouds, and no mist, and no fog.
Finally the king said, "Please, my little princess, you mustn't cry all the time. I really need clouds and fog and mist for my sky. I tell you what I'll do. If you'll weave again and work hard, I'll let you go and play with the heardboy one day each year."
The princess was so happy when she heard this that she went right to work, and she's been working very hard ever since.
But once each year, on the seventh night of the seventh month, the King of the Sky keeps his promise to Weaving Princess. He sends a flock of magpies to the Milky Way, and with their wings they make a bridge across the deep river. Then the princess goes running across the bridge of magpies to twhere the herdboy is waiting for her. And they have wonderful fun playing together for one whole night and one whole day.
That's the reason why Japanese children celebrate a holiday called Tanabata-sama, "The Seventh Night of the Seventh Month." Children everywhere love to play and it makes them happy to know that the Princess and herdboy stars are having such fun together there up in the sky. So the children on earth decorate bamboo branches with bright pieces of paper and wave them in the sky, to remind the King of the Sky that it's time for him to keep his promise again.
