{"id":9864,"date":"2014-09-12T23:06:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T23:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/?p=9864"},"modified":"2014-09-12T23:06:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T23:06:02","slug":"a-great-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/a-great-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"A Great Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contributed by Merry Carey<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is a fine old Christmas<\/a> story from 1914 about Calliope Marsh, a woman determined to gather her entire neighborhood under one Christmas<\/a> tree.<\/p>\n

A Great Tree<\/strong><\/em>
\nFrom Neighborhood Stories by Zona Gale (1914)<\/em><\/p>\n

I never had felt so much like Christmas<\/a>, said Calliope Marsh, as I did that year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish\u2019t,\u201d I says, when it got \u2019most time, \u201cI wish\u2019t I knew somebody to have a Christmas<\/a> tree with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Calliope Marsh,\u201d says Mis\u2019 Postmaster Sykes, looking surprised-on-purpose, the way she does, \u201cain\u2019t there enough poor and neglected folks in this world to please anybody?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t say have a Christmas<\/a> tree for,\u201d I says back at her; \u201cI says have one with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what you mean by that difference,\u201d she says, \u201cI\u2019m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI donno,\u201d I says, \u201cas I know either. But there is a difference, somewhere. I\u2019d kind of like to have a tree with folks this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you help on your church tree?\u201d Mis\u2019 Sykes ask\u2019 me. \u201cThey\u2019re going to spend quite a little money on theirs this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to box Christmas<\/a> up in a church,\u201d I says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, Calliope Marsh!\u201d she says, shocked.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to hurt her feelings\u2014I ain\u2019t never one of those that likes to throw their idees in folks\u2019s faces and watch folks jump back. So I tried to talk about something else, but she went right on, trying her best to help me out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ward schools is each going to have a tree this year, I hear,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go in on your ward, Calliope, and help out there? They\u2019d be real glad of help, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to divide Christmas<\/a> off into wards,\u201d I says to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, then, go in with a family,\u201d she says; \u201cany of us\u2019ll be real glad to have you,\u201d she adds, generous. \u201cWe would. Come to ours\u2014we\u2019re going to have a great big tree for the children. I\u2019ve been stringing the pop-corn and cutting the paper for it whenever I got an odd minute. The Holcombs, they\u2019re going to have one too\u2014and Mis\u2019 Uppers and Mis\u2019 Merriman and even the Hubbelthwaits and Abigail Arnold, for her little nieces. I never see a year when everybody was going to celebrate so nice. Come on with one of us, why don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d I says, \u201cmebbe I will. I\u2019ll see. I don\u2019t know yet what I will do,\u201d I told her. And I went off down the street. What I wanted to say was, \u201cI hate to box Christmas<\/a> up in a family,\u201d but I didn\u2019t quite dare\u2014yet.<\/p>\n

Friendship Village ain\u2019t ever looked much more like Christmas<\/a>, to my notion, than it did that December. Just the right snow had come\u2014and no more; and just the right cold\u2014and no more. The moon was getting along so\u2019s about the night of the twenty-fifth it was going to loom up big and gold and warm over the fields on the flats, where it always comes up in winter like it had just edged around there to get sort of a wide front yard for its big show, where the whole village could have a porch seat.<\/p>\n

You know when you live in a village you always know whether the moon is new or to the full or where it is and when it\u2019s going to be; but when you live in a city you just look up in the sky some night and say \u201cOh, that\u2019s so, there\u2019s the moon,\u201d and go right on thinking about something else. Here in the village that December everything was getting ready, deliberate, for a full-moon Christmas<\/a>, like long ago. The moon and the cold and the snow, and all them public things, was doing their best, together, for our common Christmas<\/a>. All but us. It seemed like all of us humans was working for it separate.<\/p>\n

Tramping along there in the snow that night, I thought over what Mis\u2019 Sykes had said, and about all the places she\u2019d mentioned over was going to have Christmas<\/a> trees. And I looked along to the houses, most of \u2019em lying right there on Daphne Street, where they were going to have \u2019em\u2014I could see \u2019em all, one tree after another, lighted and streaming from house to house all up and down Daphne Street, just the way they were going to look.<\/p>\n

And then there was the little back streets, and the houses down on the flats, where there wouldn\u2019t be any trees nor much of any Christmas<\/a>. Of course, as Mis\u2019 Sykes had said, the poor and the neglected are always with us\u2014yet; but I didn\u2019t want to pounce down on any of \u2019em with a bag of fruit and a box of animal crackers and set and watch \u2019em.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t what I meant by having a Christmas<\/a> with somebody.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019d ought to be some place\u2014\u201d I was beginning to think, when right along where I was, by the Market Square, I come on five or six children, kicking around in the snow. I was \u2019most dark, but I could just make \u2019em out: Eddie Newhaven, Arthur Mills, Lily Dorron, and two-three more.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, folks,\u201d I says, \u201cwhat you doing? Having a carnival?\u201d Because it\u2019s on the Market Square that carnivals and some little circuses and things that belongs to everybody is usually celebrated.<\/p>\n

Little Arthur Mills spoke up. \u201cNo,\u201d he says, \u201cwe was just playing we\u2019s selling a load of Christmas<\/a> trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChristmas trees,\u201d I says. \u201cWhy, that\u2019s so. This is where they always bring \u2019em to sell\u2014big load of \u2019em for everybody, ain\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to bring an awful big load here this time,\u201d says Eddie Newhaven\u2014\u201cbig enough for everybody in town to have one. Most of the fellows is going to have \u2019em\u2014us and Ned Backus and the Cartwrights and Joe Tyrril and Lifty\u2014all of \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy,\u201d I says, \u201cwhat a lot of Christmas<\/a> trees! Why, if they was set along by the curb-stone here on Daphne Street,\u201d I says, just to please the children and make a little talk with \u2019em, \u201cwhy, the line of \u2019em would reach all up and down the town,\u201d I says. \u201cWouldn\u2019t that be fun?\u201d<\/p>\n

Little Lily claps her hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, yes,\u201d she cries, \u201cwouldn\u2019t that be fun? With pop-corn strings all going from one to the other?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be a grand sight,\u201d says I, looking down across the Market Square. There, hanging all gold and quiet, like it didn\u2019t think it amounted to much, right over the big cedar-of-Lebanon-looking tree in the Square, was the moon, crooked to a horn.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce,\u201d says Eddie Newhaven, \u201cwhen they was selling the Christmas<\/a> trees here, they kept right on selling \u2019em after dark. And they stood \u2019em around here and put a little light in each one. It was awful nice. Wouldn\u2019t it be nice if they\u2019d do that all over the Square some time!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be a grand sight,\u201d says I again, \u201cbut one that the folks in this town would never have time for.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

While I spoke I was looking down across Market Square again toward the moon hanging over the cedar-of-Lebanon-looking tree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a pretty good-looking tree there already,\u201d I says idle. \u201cWhat a grand thing it would be lit up,\u201d says I, for not much of any reason\u2014only to keep the talk going with the children. Then something went through me from my head to my feet. \u201cWhy not light it some time?\u201d I says.<\/p>\n

The children set up a little shout\u2014part because they liked it, part because they thought such a thing could never be. I laughed with \u2019em, and I went on up the street\u2014but all the time something in me kept on saying something, all hurried and as if it meant it. And little ends of ideas, and little jagged edges of other ideas, and plans part raveled out that you thought you could knit up again, and long, sharp motions, a little something like light, kept going through my head and going through it.<\/p>\n

Down to the next corner I met Ben Cory, that keeps the livery-stable and sings bass to nearly everybody\u2019s funeral and to other public occasions.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen,\u201d I says excited, though I hadn\u2019t thought anything about this till that minute, \u201cBen\u2014you getting up any Christmas<\/a> Eve Christmas<\/a> carols to sing this year?\u201d<\/p>\n

He had a new string of sleigh-bells over his shoulder, and he give it a shift, I recollect, so\u2019s they all jingled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d he says, \u201cI did allow to do it. But I\u2019ve spoke to one or two, and they donno\u2019s they can do it. Some has got to sing to churches earlier in the evening and they donno\u2019s they want to tune up all night. And the most has got to be home for family Christmas<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere ain\u2019t,\u201d I says, \u201cno manner o\u2019 doubt about the folks that\u2019d be glad to listen, is there, provided you had the singers?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, sure,\u201d he says. \u201cFolks shines up to music consider\u2019ble, Christmas<\/a> Eve. It\u2014sort of\u2014well, it\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I says, \u201cI know. It does, don\u2019t it? Well, Ben Cory, you get your Christmas-carol singers together and a-caroling, and I\u2019ll undertake that there sha\u2019n\u2019t nothing much stand in the way of their being out on Christmas<\/a> Eve. Is it a bargain?\u201d<\/p>\n

His face lit up, all jolly and hearty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, sure it\u2019s a bargain,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ll get \u2019em. I wanted to, only I didn\u2019t want to carol \u2019em any more than they wanted to be caroled. I\u2019ll get \u2019em,\u201d he says, and gives his bells a hunch that made \u2019em ring all up and down Daphne Street\u2014that the moon was looking down at just as if it was public property and not all made up of little private plans with just room enough for us four and no more, or figures to that effect.<\/p>\n

I donno if you\u2019ve ever managed any kind of a revolution?<\/p>\n

They\u2019s two kinds of revolutions. One breaks off of something that\u2019s always been. You pick up the broke piece and try to throw it away to make room for something that\u2019s growing out of the other part. And \u2019most everybody will begin to tell you that the growing piece ain\u2019t any good, but that the other part is the kind you have always bought and that you\u2019d better save it and stick it back on. But then they\u2019s the other kind of revolution that backs away from something that\u2019s always been and looks at it a little farther off than it ever see it before, and says: \u201cLet\u2019s us move a little way around and pay attention to this thing from a new spot.\u201d And real often, if you put it that way, they\u2019s enough people willing to do that, because they know they can go right back afterward and stand in the same old place if they want to.<\/p>\n

Well, this last was the kind of a revolution I took charge of that week before Christmas<\/a>. I got my plans and my ideas and my notions all planned and thought and budded, and then I presented \u2019em around, abundant.<\/p>\n

The very next morning after I\u2019d seen the children I started out, while I had kind of a glow to drape around the difficulties so\u2019s I couldn\u2019t see \u2019em. I went first to the store-keepers, seeing Christmas<\/a> always seems to hinge and hang on what they say and do. And I sent to Eppleby Holcomb, because I knew he\u2019d see it like I done\u2014and I wanted the brace of being agreed with, like you do.<\/p>\n

Eppleby\u2019s store was all decorated up with green cut paper and tassels and turkey-red calico poinsettias, and it looked real nice and tasty. And the store was full of the country trade. The little overhead track that took the bundles had broke down just at the wrong minutes, and old rich Mis\u2019 Wiswell\u2019s felt soles had got stuck half-way, and Eppleby himself was up on top of a counter trying to rescue \u2019em for her, while she made tart remarks below. When he\u2019d fished \u2019em out and wrapped \u2019em up for her,<\/p>\n

\u201cEppleby,\u201d I says, \u201cwould you be willing to shut up shop on Christmas<\/a> Eve, or wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked kind of startled. \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty good night for trade, you know, Calliope?\u201d says he\u2014doubtful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, yes,\u201d I says, \u201cit is. But everybody that\u2019s going to give presents to people\u2019ll give presents to people. And if the stores ain\u2019t open Christmas<\/a> Eve, folks\u2019ll buy \u2019em when the stores is open. Is that sense, or ain\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

He knew it was. And when I told him what I\u2019d got hold of, stray places in my head, he says if the rest would shut he\u2019d shut, and be glad of it. Abigail Arnold done the same about her home bakery, and the Gekerjecks, and two-three more. But Silas Sykes, that keeps the post-office store, he was firm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that ain\u2019t woman-foolish,\u201d he says, \u201cI donno what is. You ain\u2019t no more id\u00e9e of business than so many cats. No, sir. I don\u2019t betray the public by cutting \u2019em off of one evening\u2019s shopping like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It made a nice little sentence to quote, and I quoted it consider\u2019ble. And the result was, the rest of \u2019em, that knew Silas, head and heart, finally says, all right, he could keep open if he wanted to, and enjoy himself, and they\u2019d all shut up. I honestly think they kind of appreciated, in a nice, neighborly way, making Silas feel mean\u2014when he\u2019d ought to.<\/p>\n

It was a little harder to make the Sunday-school superintendents see the thing that I had in my head. Of course, when a thing has been the way it has been for a good while, you can\u2019t really blame people for feeling<\/a> that it\u2019s been the way it ought to be. Feelings seems made that way. Our superintendent has been our superintendent for \u2019most forty years\u2014ever since the church was built\u2014and of course his thoughts is kind of turned to bone in some places, naturally.<\/p>\n

His name is Jerry Bemus, and he keeps a little harness shop next door to the Town Hall that\u2019s across from Market Square. When I went in that day he was resting from making harnesses, and he was practicing on his cornet. He can make a bugle call real nice\u2014you can often hear it, going up and down Daphne Street in the morning, and when I\u2019m down doing my trading I always like to hear it\u2014it gives me kind of a nice, old-fashioned feeling<\/a>, like when Abigail Arnold fries doughnuts in the back of the Home Bakery and we can all smell \u2019em, out in the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cJerry,\u201d I says, \u201chow much is our Sunday-school Christmas<\/a> tree going to cost us?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerry\u2019s got a wooden leg, and he can not remember not to try to cross it over the other one. He done that now, and give it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe calc\u2019late about twenty-five dollars,\u201d says he, proud.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we going to do to celebrate?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d he says, \u201chave speaking pieces\u2014we got a program of twenty numbers already,\u2019 says he, pleased. \u201cAnd a trimmed tree, and an orange, and a bag of nuts and candy for every child,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the other churches is going to do the same,\u201d I says. \u201cFive trees and five programs and five sets of stuff all around. And all of \u2019em on Christmas<\/a> Eve, when you\u2019d think we\u2019d all sort of draw together instead of setting apart, in cliques. Land,\u201d I says out, \u201cthat first Christmas<\/a> Eve wouldn\u2019t the angels have stopped singing and wept in the sky if they could of seen what we\u2019d do to it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHush, Calliope,\u201d says Jerry Bemus, shocked. \u201cThey ain\u2019t no need to be sacrilegious, is they?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a bit,\u201d says I; \u201cwe\u2019ve been it so long a\u2019ready, worshiping around in sections like Hottentots. Well, now,\u201d I says, \u201cdo you honestly think we\u2019ve all chose the best way to go at Christmas<\/a> Eve for the children, filling them up with colored stuff and getting their stummicks all upset?\u201d<\/p>\n

We had quite a little talk about it, back and forth, Jerry and me. And all of a sudden, while I was trying my best to make him see what I saw, I happened to notice his bugle again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere ain\u2019t no thrill in none of it,\u201d I was saying to him. \u201cNot half so much,\u201d I says, \u201cas there is in your bugle. When I hear that go floating up and down the street, I always kind of feel like it was announcing something. To my notion,\u201d I says, \u201cit could announce Christmas<\/a> to this town far better than forty-\u2019leven little separate trimmed-up trees.\u2026Why, Jerry,\u201d I says out sudden, \u201clisten to what I\u2019ve thought of.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

A little something had come in my head that minute, unexpected, that fitted itself into the rest of my plan. And it made Jerry say, pretty soon, that he was willing to go with me to see the other superintendents; and we done so that very day. Ain\u2019t it funny how big things work out by homely means\u2014by homely means? Sole because the choir-leader in one choir had resigned because the bass in that choir was the bass in that choir, and so they didn\u2019t have anybody there to train their Christmas<\/a> music, and sole because another congregation was hard up and was having to borrow its Christmas<\/a> celebration money out of the foreign missionary fund\u2014we got \u2019em to see sense. And then the other two joined in.<\/p>\n

The schools were all right from the first, being built, like they are, on a basis of belonging to everybody, same as breathing and one-two other public utilities, and nothing dividing anybody from anybody. And I begun to feel like life and the world was just one great bud, longing to open, so be it could get enough care.<\/p>\n

The worst ones to get weaned away from a perfectly selfish way of observing Christ\u2019s birthday was the private families. Land, land, I kept saying to myself them days, we all of us act like we was studying kindergarten mathematics. We count up them that\u2019s closest to us, and we can\u2019t none of us seem to count much above ten.<\/p>\n

Not all of \u2019em was that way, though. Well\u2014if it just happens that you live in any town whatever in the civilized world, I think you\u2019ll know about what I had said to me.<\/p>\n

On the one hand it went about like this, from Mis\u2019 Timothy Toplayd and the Holcombs and the Hubbelthwaits and a lot more:<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, land knows, it\u2019d save us lots of back-aching work\u2014but\u2014will the children like it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike it?\u201d I says. \u201cTry \u2019em. Trust \u2019em without trying \u2019em if you want to. I would. Remember,\u201d I couldn\u2019t help adding, \u201cyou like to be with the children a whole lot oftener than they like to be with you. What they like is to be together.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, \u201cWell, do you honestly think it\u2019ll work? I don\u2019t see how it can\u2014anything so differ\u2019nt.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, \u201cWell, they ain\u2019t any harm trying it one year, as I can see. That can\u2019t break up the holidays, as I know of.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the other side had figured it out just like the other side of everything always figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalliope,\u201d says Mis\u2019 Postmaster Sykes, \u201care you crazy-headed? What\u2019s your idee? Ain\u2019t things all right the way they\u2019ve always been done?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d says I, conservative, \u201cnot all of \u2019em. Not wholesale, I wouldn\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you can\u2019t go changing things like this,\u201d she told me. \u201cWhat\u2019ll become of Christmas<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChristmas,\u201d I says, \u201cdon\u2019t need you or me, Mis\u2019 Sykes, to be its guardians. All Christmas<\/a> needs if for us to get out of its way, and leave it express what it means.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the home Christmas<\/a>,\u201d she says, \u2019most like a wail. \u201cWould you do away with that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I sort of turned on her. I couldn\u2019t help it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhose home?\u201d I says stern. \u201cIf it\u2019s your home you mean, or any of the thousands of others like it where Christmas<\/a> is kept, then you know, and they all know, that nothing on earth can take away the Christmas<\/a> feeling<\/a> and the Christmas<\/a> joy as long as you want it to be there. But if it\u2019s the homes you mean\u2014and there\u2019s thousands of \u2019em\u2014where no Christmas<\/a> ever comes, you surely ain\u2019t arguing to keep them the way they\u2019ve been kept?\u201d<\/p>\n

But she continued to shake her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can do as you like, of course,\u201d she said, \u201cand so can everybody else. It\u2019s their privilege. But as for me, I shall trim my little tree here by our own fireside. And here we shall celebrate Christmas\u2014Jeddie and Nora and father and me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can\u2019t you do both?\u201d I says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have you give up your fireside end of things for anything on earth. But why can\u2019t you do both?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mis\u2019 Sykes didn\u2019t rightly seem to know\u2014at least she didn\u2019t say. But she give me to understand that her mind run right along in the self-same groove it had had made for it, cozy.<\/p>\n

* * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

Somehow, the longer I live, the less sense I seem to have. There\u2019s some things I\u2019ve learned from twenty-five to thirty times in my life, and yet I can\u2019t seem to remember them no more than I can remember whether it\u2019s sulphite or sulphate of soda that I take for my quinsy. And one of these is about taking thing casual.<\/p>\n

That night, for instance, when I come round the corner on to Daphne Street at half-past seven on Christmas<\/a> Eve, I thought I was going to have to waste a minute or two standing just where the bill-board makes a shadow for the arc-light, trying to get used to the idea of what we were doing\u2014used to it in my throat. But there wasn\u2019t much time to spend that way, being there were things to do between then and eight o\u2019clock, when we\u2019d told \u2019em all to be there. So I ran along and tried not to think about it\u2014except the work part. \u2019Most always, the work part of anything\u2019ll steady you.<\/p>\n

The great cedar-of-Lebanon-looking tree, standing down there on the edge of the Market Square and acting as if it had been left from some long-ago forest, on purpose, had been hung round with lines and lines of strung pop-corn\u2014the kind that no Christmas<\/a> tree would be a Christmas<\/a> tree without, because so many, many folks has set up stringing it nights of Christmas<\/a> week, after the children was in bed, and has kept it, careful, in a box, so\u2019s it\u2019d do for next year. We had all that from the churches\u2014Methodist and Presbyterian and Episcopal and Baptist and Catholic pop-corn, and you couldn\u2019t tell \u2019em apart at all when you got \u2019em on the tree. The festoons showed ghostly-white in the dark and the folks showed ghostly-black, hurrying back and forth doing the last things.<\/p>\n

And the folks was coming\u2014you could hear \u2019em all along Daphne Street, tripping on the bad place that hadn\u2019t been mended because it was right under the arc-light, and coming over the hollow-sounding place by Graham\u2019s drug-store, and coming from the little side streets and the dark back streets and the streets down on the flats. Some of \u2019em had Christmas<\/a> trees waiting at home\u2014the load had been there on the Market Square, just like we had let it be there for years without seeing that the Market Square had any other Christmas<\/a> uses\u2014and a good many had bought trees. But a good many more had decided not to have any\u2014only just to hang up stockings; and to let the great big common Christmas<\/a> tree stand for what it stood for, gathering most of that little garland of Daphne Street trees up into its living heart.<\/p>\n

Over by the bandstand I come on them I\u2019d been looking for\u2014Eddie Newhaven and Arthur Mills and Lily Dorron and Sarah and Mollie and the Cartwrights and Lifty and six-eight more.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, folks,\u201d I says. \u201cWhat you down here for? Why ain\u2019t you home?\u201d<\/p>\n

They answered all together:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the big tree!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you now?\u201d I says\u2014just to keep on a-talking to \u2019em. \u201cWhose tree?\u201d<\/p>\n

I love<\/a> to remember the way they answered. It was Eddie Newhaven that said it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, all of us\u2019s!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

All of us\u2019s! I like to say it over when they get to saying \u201cmine\u201d and \u201ctheirs\u201d too hard where I am.<\/p>\n

When it was eight o\u2019clock and there was enough gathered on the Square, they done the thing that was going to be done, only nobody had known how well they were going to do it. They touched the button, and from the bottom branch to the tip-top little cone, the big old tree came alight, just like it knew what it was all about and like it had come out of the ground long ago for this reason\u2014only we\u2019d never known. Two hundred little electric lights<\/a> there were, colored, and paid for private, though I done my best to get the town to pay for \u2019em, like it ought to for its own tree; but they was paid for private\u2014yet.<\/p>\n

It made a little oh! come in the crowd and run round, it was so big and beautiful, standing there against the stars like it knew well enough that it was one of \u2019em, whether we knew it or not. And coming up across the flats, big and gold and low, was the moon, most full, like it belonged, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd glory shone around,\u201d I says to myself\u2014and I stood there feeling<\/a> the glory, outside and in. Not my little celebration, and your little celebration, and their little celebration, private, that was costing each of us more than it ought to\u2014but our celebration, paying attention to the message that Christ paid attention to.<\/p>\n

I was so full of it that I didn\u2019t half see Ben Cory and his carolers come racing out of the dark. They was all fixed up in funny pointed hoods and in cloaks and carrying long staves with everybody\u2019s barn-yard lanterns tied on the end of \u2019em, and they run out in a line down to the tree, and they took hold of hands and danced around it, singing to their voices\u2019 top a funny old tune, one of them tunes that, whether you\u2019ve ever heard it before or not, kind of makes things in you that\u2019s older than you are yourself wake up and remember, real plain.<\/p>\n

And Jerry Bemus shouted out at \u2019em: \u201cSing it again\u2014sing it again!\u201d and pounded his wooden leg with his cane. \u201cSing it again, I tell you. I ain\u2019t heard anybody sing that for goin\u2019 on forty years.\u201d And everybody laughed, and they sung it again for him, and some more songs that had come out of the old country that a little bit of it was living inside everybody that was there. And while they were singing, it came to me all of a sudden about another night, \u2019most three hundred years before, when on American soil that lonesome English heart, up there in Boston, had dreamed ahead to a time when Christmas<\/a> would come here.\u2026
\n\u201cBut faith unrolls the future scrolls;
\nChristmas<\/a> shall not die,
\nNor men of English blood and speech
\nForget their ancestry\u2014\u201d
\nor any other blood, or any other speech that has in it the spirit of what Christ come to teach. And that\u2019s all of us. And it felt to me as if now we were only just beginning to take out our little single, lonely tapers and carry them to light a great tree.<\/p>\n

Then, just after the carols died down, the thing happened that we\u2019d planned to happen: Over on one side the choirs of all the churches, that I guess had never sung together in their lives before, though they\u2019d been singing steadily about the self-same things since they was born choirs, begun to sing\u2014
\nSilent night, holy night.
\nThink of it\u2014down there on the Market Square that had never had anything sung on it before except carnival tunes and circus tunes. All up and down Daphne Street it must of sounded, only there was hardly anybody far off to hear it, the most of \u2019em being right there with all of us. They sung it without anybody playing it for \u2019em and they sung it from first to last.<\/p>\n

And then they slipped into another song that isn\u2019t a Christmas<\/a> carol exactly, not not any song that comes in the book under \u201cChristmas,\u201d but something that comes in just as natural as if it was another name for what Christmas<\/a> was\u2014\u201cNearer, my God, to thee,\u201d and \u201cLead, Kindly Light,\u201d and some more. And after a bar or two of the first one, the voices all around begun kind of mumbling and humming and carrying the tunes along in their throats without anybody in particular starting \u2019em there, and then they all just naturally burst out and sung too.<\/p>\n

And so I donno who done it\u2014whether the choirs had planned it that way, or whether they just thought of it then, or whether somebody in the crowd struck it up unbeknownst to himself, or whether the song begun to sing itself; but it come from somewhere, strong and clear and real\u2014a song that the children has been learning in school and has been teaching the town for a year or two now, sung to the tune of \u201cWacht am Rhein\u201d:
\nThe crest and crowning of all good\u2014
\nLife\u2019s common goal\u2014is brotherhood.
\nAnd then everybody sung. Because that\u2019s a piece you can\u2019t sing alone. You can not sing it alone. All over the Market Square they took it up, and folks that couldn\u2019t sing, and me that can\u2019t sing a note except when there\u2019s nobody around that would recognize me if they ever saw me again\u2014we all sung together, there in the dark, with the tree in the midst.<\/p>\n

And we seemed long and long away from the time when the leader in one of them singing choirs had left the other choir because the bass in the other choir was the bass in the other choir. And it was like the Way Things Are had suddenly spoke for a minute, there in the singing choirs come out of their separate lofts, and in all the singing folks. And in all of us\u2014all of us.<\/p>\n

Then up hopped Eppleby Holcomb on to a box in front of the tree, and he calls out:<\/p>\n

\u201cMerry Christmas<\/a>! Merry Christmas\u2014on the first annual outdoor Christmas-tree celebration of Friendship Village!\u201d<\/p>\n

When he said that I felt\u2014well, it don\u2019t make any difference to anybody how I felt; but what I done was to turn and make for the edge of the crowd just as fast as I could. And just then there come what Eppleby\u2019s words was the signal for. And out on the little flag-staff balcony of the Town Hall Jerry Bemus stepped with his bugle, and he blew it shrill and clear, so that it sounded all over the town, once, twice, three times, a bugle-call to say it was Christmas<\/a>. We couldn\u2019t wait till twelve o\u2019clock\u2014we are all in bed long before that time in Friendship Village, holiday or not.<\/p>\n

But the bugle-call said it was Christmas<\/a> just the same. Think of it\u2026the bugle that used to say it was war. And the same minute the big tree went out, all still and quiet, but to be lit again next year and to stay a living thing in between.<\/p>\n

When I stepped on to Daphne Street, who should I come face to face with but Mis\u2019 Postmaster Sykes. I was feeling<\/a> so glorified over, that I never thought of its being strange that she was there. But she spoke up, just the same as if I\u2019d said: \u201cWhy, I thought you wasn\u2019t coming near.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe children was bound to come,\u201d she says, \u201cso I had to bring \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I thought to myself, \u201cthe children know. They know.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I even couldn\u2019t feel bad when I passed the post-office store and see Silas sitting there all sole alone\u2014the only lit store in the street. I knew he\u2019d be on the Market Square the next year.<\/p>\n

They went singing through all the streets that night, Ben Cory and his carolers. \u201cSilent night, holy night\u201d come from my front gate when I was \u2019most asleep. It was like the whole town was being sung to by something that didn\u2019t show. And when the time comes that this something speaks clear all the time,\u2014well, it ain\u2019t a very far-off time, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contributed by Merry Carey Here is a fine old Christmas story from 1914 about Calliope Marsh, a woman determined to gather her entire neighborhood under one Christmas tree. A Great Tree From Neighborhood Stories by Zona Gale (1914) I never had felt so much like Christmas, said Calliope Marsh, as I did that year. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}