Christmas Memories

In the town where I was born and raised, everyone drove a few miles south to cut a tree. In that dry, windy country few of the cedars grew straight and full, so the major problem was to find the one least lopsided and wind-whipped. Thus A. C. Greene, in The Too-Big Christmas Tree, tells of a Christmas in the 1920s when his father cut a too-big tree and almost broke up the family. Long out-of-print and a collector’s item, this story is now coupled with Christmas Shopping, in which a small boy sets out with his grandmother on his first shopping trip to buy Christmas presents for the family. My grandmother and I boarded the little four-wheel trolley on the Fair Park loop–the men who were waiting all tipping their hats and letting the women and children on first. Pretty soon we were bumping and swaying up Sayles Hill on our way to downtown.