CHAPTER SIX
I
The magic of the starlit tree
e have always had a tree for Christmas. Long ago, far back in our early flat-dwelling days, we had our first one, and I remember we shopped for it Christmas Eve among the bright little Harlem groceries where they had them ranged outside, picking very carefully for one symmetrical in shape and small of size and price, to fit our tiny flat and, oh yes, indeed, our casual income. I remember, too, that when it was finally bought I put it on my shoulder with a proud feeling, and we drifted farther, picking up the trimmings—the tinsel and gay ornaments, the small gifts for the one very small person who had so recently come to live with us, discussing each purchase with due deliberation, going home at last with rather more than we could afford, I fear, for I recall further that we did not have enough left next morning to buy butter for breakfast. How young we were then, and how poor, and how happy! and Christmas morning, with its twinkling mystery, was the most precious thing of the whole year.
It still remained so. Time could not dim the magic of the starlit tree. Another little person had come, and another. A larger tree and more decorations were needed, and the presents grew in number and variety, but the old charm of secret preparation, and morning gifts, and the lights that first twinkled around a manger, did not fade.
We did not buy a tree at Brook Ridge. There was no need. Across the road, partway up the slope, was a collection of green and shapely little cedars—a regular Santa Claus grove—and on the afternoon before Christmas, a gray, still afternoon, heavy with mystic portent, Elizabeth and I took a small ax and climbed up there, and picked and selected, just as we had done in those earlier years, and came home with our tree, stealthily carrying it in the back way, to the wood-house, and fitting it to the small green stand that we had used and preserved from year to year. The little girl for whom we had bought the first tree was the Pride, now aged twelve, and no longer without knowledge of the Christmas saint, but the romance of not knowing, of still believing in it all, was too precious to be put away yet, and she was off to bed with the others to bring more quickly the joyous morning. Alone, as heretofore, Elizabeth and I tied and marked the tissue packages, and in some of the books wrote rhymes, such as only Santa Claus can think of when he has finished his remote year of toil and has started out with his loaded sleigh to strew happiness around the world.
I suppose there is no more delightful employment than to watch the thing that will give a splendid joy to one's children grow and glisten under one's hands—to view it at different angles during the process; to note how it begins to look "Christmasy," to add a touch here, a brightness there, to see it at last radiant and complete, ready for the morning illumination. On the topmost branch each year there was always the same little hanging ornament, a swinging tinseled cherub that we had bought for the very first little tree and the very first little girl, in the days when we had been so young, so poor, and so happy.