Elf Nisse was known throughout Elfland as the most skilled decorator of gift packages. His workspace was filled with paint pots, ribbons, stars, and all sorts of sparkling trinkets. His most important tool was a brush with a golden handle, at the tip of which sparkled a small star-shaped crystal. This brush was no ordinary one; with it, he could draw intricate patterns incredibly quickly. The patterns glowed in the dark like the northern lights in a Karelian winter. Nisse’s golden brush also helped him write secret messages that only the recipient of the gift could see. Sometimes the gift box would tinkle softly when touched.
Nisse cherished his brush like the apple of his eye. Every evening he placed it on a soft velvet cushion embroidered with the words: “Radiance comes from the heart.” Together with the velvet cushion the brush, he lifted the wooden box, closed the lid, and spread the embroidered cloth over the box. Thus his most precious tool was enjoying the best rest in the world. But one morning, exactly on December 1st, he woke up earlier than usual and immediately sensed that something was wrong. Everything in the room was in its place, but the cloth on top of the wooden box looked different than it had the night before. Nisse folded the cloth, placed it on the table next to the box, and opened the box. The brush was gone!
“No, no, no… this can’t be true!” muttered Nisse, rummaging through his desk, glancing at the gingerbread box, even checking inside his slippers. He had tilted and shaken the box and the velvet cushion in every direction several times, but the golden brush was nowhere to be found. He ran over to his neighbour, the elf Nöps. Nöps was known as very wise and the best inventor in Elfland.
“Have you seen my brush?” Nisse asked, panting.
Nöps shook his head. “No, but if it’s gone, then maybe it isn’t gone… maybe it’s on its way.”
“On its way?” Nisse repeated.
“Yes. Some things have to wander to find their true place.”
Nisse didn’t understand what was going on, but he decided to go look for it. He put on his red coat, grabbed a lantern just in case, and set off. As he walked through the woods, he wondered how the paintbrush had gone off on an adventure. Paintbrushes don’t go on adventures; they paint the world’s most beautiful decorations, especially when they’re used on Christmas gifts.
First, he went to a large spruce forest. There, the trees swayed in the gentle breeze, and every now and then a large snowball fell from a branch. He asked every tree if they had seen a golden brush. An old spruce finally replied, “I saw something sparkling flying northward. But it wasn’t a brush. It was someone’s beautiful thought.”
Nisse wandered on. He met a snow-cat who was looking for her lost bell. Together they searched through the snowdrifts, climbed the trees, walked on the rooftops, listened to the wind rustling, and gazed at the stars. They didn’t find the brush. They found the snow-cat’s lost bell, which had apparently gotten caught behind a branch while dashing through the trees.
Nisse was very sad. The snow-cat tried to comfort him: “Sometimes what you say adorns things the most, not what you draw.”
Nisse thought long and hard about the snow-cat’s words. He continued his search. As a tireless worker, he met many along the way. The funniest were a little polar bear who was afraid of the snow and a child whose gift wouldn’t fit in the package. In every story, there was something that reminded him of the brush. Homes beautifully and lovingly decorated, sparkle, care, joy, rooms full of happy people. But the brush itself was nowhere to be found. Days passed. Nisse was very sad, and he began to decorate the packages with simple words. “To my dear mother,” “To my beloved father,” “To my little brother,” “To my twin sisters,” and so on. She wrote them by hand with a completely ordinary pencil, added a small gingerbread letter, and tied a simple string around them. And strangely enough, those packages began to shine brighter than ever before. They radiated warmth, and sometimes when Nisse got tired of writing, she would fall into a very deep sleep among the gift packages. In his dream, he saw the gifts running away from him so she couldn’t write on them. He managed to catch one small package, and he knew exactly where in the world this gift would travel. It was for a family’s grandmother and grandfather, a pair of woollen socks for each and a few gingerbread-cookies.
Nisse was in a real bind, the package was small and the message so long. In the end, he simply wrote: “To Grandma and Grandpa.” That was his shorthand for “grandmother” and “grandfather.” As soon as the last letter was written, the gift package rose into the air and floated up to the high shelf to await its next journey. From the shelf into the bag, and then from Santa’s bag into the grandparents’ hands. The other gifts were enchanted by this heartfelt simplicity. They asked Nisse to leave all the fancy words aside and write simply, but from the heart. Even when all the words didn’t fit on the package, the gifts were happy with Nisse’s ability to put words together. He always found a unique solution. Nisse was still sad that he hadn’t found his golden brush. But he didn’t know that this little golden friend was full of mischief and had decided to journey with Nisse through all the stories we’ll still hear. Sometimes it appears in a child’s dream, sometimes it hides beneath a blanket of fresh snow, and sometimes it warms someone’s heart, unaware that it is being sought.
Good night, my little one, we’ll meet again tomorrow evening!