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Updated: May 31, 2025
Her husband made known his willingness to conduct me to the music-room, and we ceremoniously descended a staircase blooming like the hanging-gardens of Babylon. From there I had my first glimpse of the company. They were strange people. The women glittered like Christmas-trees.
Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some forest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees all winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants, cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of a dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost in the distant darkling spaces.
The balsam-fir, with its elastic branches and thick flat needles, is the best of all. A bed of these boughs a foot deep is softer than a mattress and as fragrant as a thousand Christmas-trees. Two things more are needed for the ideal camp-ground an open situation, where the breeze will drive away the flies and mosquitoes, and an abundance of dry firewood within easy reach.
'It is very pretty, but it was a nicer Christmas-tree last year at Lady Runnymede's, said Louisa, with the air of a critic. 'There we had coloured lamps. 'Little fastidious puss! said Louis, 'I thought you keeping in the background out of politeness; but I see you are only blasee with Christmas-trees. I pity you!
Drawn by a mild-faced ewe, whose fleece had been washed to a wonder of whiteness and who was decked out with bright-coloured ribbons in a way to unhinge with vanity her sheepish mind, was a little two-wheeled cart all garlanded with laurel and holly, and bedizened with knots of ribbon and pink paper roses and glittering little objects such as are hung on Christmas-trees in other lands.
Their money and food was soon spent; they could have scarcely a fire in that bitter hard season; and God who feeds the ravens alone knows how they were sustained; and for entertainment to make the time pass merrily, all they had was to see the hanging of their own servants in scores about the house, who had served them and their father well; and all their music at night was the howling of the wind in those heavily laden Christmas-trees, and the noise of the chains in which the men were hanged."
Unless we are still numbered among those happy people for whom Christmas-trees are laden and lit, this annual prematurity of Christmas cannot but make us a little meditative amid our mirth, and if, while Santa Claus is dispensing his glittering treasures, our thoughts grow a little wistful, they will not necessarily be mournful thoughts, or on that account less seasonable in character; for Christmas is essentially a retrospective feast, and we may, with fitness, with indeed a proper piety of unforgetfulness, bring even our sad memories, as it were to cheer themselves, within the glow of its festivity.
The spacious area between the bazaar and the sidewalk of the Nevsky is filled with Christmas-trees, beautifully unadorned, or ruined with misplaced gaudiness, brought in, in the majority of cases, by Finns from the surrounding country. Again, in the week preceding Palm Sunday, the Verbnaya Yarmaraka, or Pussy Willow Fair, takes place here.
Soon it will resound through the world, and show how genius binds puffed-up folly, which calls itself geniality, to the pillory." It was Christmas eve! The streets were white with snow; crowds of people were rushing through the castle square, seeking for Christmas-trees, and little presents for their children. There were, however, fewer purchasers than usual.
An odd thing for me to dream about Christmas-trees and dolls and playmates: especially when I went to sleep thinking about my new camera." "You have a new camera?" she asked. "Yes," he answered, "and a beauty, too. Would you like to see it?"
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