On the morning before the Christmas that fell before I was six, my father took my brother and me for a walk in the woods of the old colony town where we lived. Three times as we walked, he stopped, and cut a small balsam tree. There was a very tiny one, hardly more than a seedling; a small one a foot or so high; and a youthful one of perhaps four feet. So we each had a tree to bear, flaglike, back to the house. It didn't occur to us single-minded larvae, that this had the least connection with Christmas. Our father was a botonist Ph.D., given to plucking all manner of specimens whenever we walked, with the offhand explanation, "A few Tsuga canadensis", or whatever it was. By nightfall we had forgotten all about the walk.

For this was Christmas Eve, and we were suddenly in a panic. Where was The Tree? From experience, we knew that is was usually delivered in the morning, that Father set it up in the afternoon, and that Mother trimmed it at night, letting us help with the ornaments before she put us to bed with a fever of anticipation. But this year we had seen no tree arrive; look where we would, we could not find one; and even Mother turned aside our questions. Would there be no tree? Would there, perhaps, be no Christmas at all for us? How we wished now, that we had not put the cat in the milk-pail!

But after supper Father and Mother took us into the sitting-room. In a cleared corner over by the big closet stood a jar of earth. "Christmas,"said Father, "is a day of miracles, to remind us of the greatest Miracle of all. Perhaps we shall see one." Then Mother led us out, closing the door on Father and the jar of earth - and the closet.

"We can help," she said, "by learning this song." And she began, softly but very true, "O Little Town of Bethleham." We tried hard in our shrill way. But even Mother had to admit that it was only a good try. Yet when the door opened and we went again into the sitting-room, behold! A tiny Tree had appeared in the jar of earth! Hardly more than a seedling, to be sure, and not old enough yet to bear ornaments, but indubitably a tree. Marveling, we went out again.

This time we did better - on the words, if not the tune. And when we re-entered the sitting-room, the Tree had grown - to perhaps a foot or so in height! A blaze of hope flashed upon us. We went out and tried harder on that song. And sure enough, this time the tree was taller than either boy. Terrific! We could hardly wait to get outside and sing some more with Mother. For now hope was a rapture of certainty.

To this day I cannot hear "O Little Town of Bethlehem," from whatever cracked a curbside organ without hearing through and beyond it the clear true voice of my Mother. Nor hear that long - vanished sweetness without knowing that presently, somewhere, somehow a great door is going to open and disclose unearthly beauty. It is now more than sixty years since our sitting-room door swung back for the fourth time, that night in the Old Colony of Massachusetts. But I can still see, sharp as life, the splendor of the tree that towered to the ceiling in it's glossy dark green, sparkling with silver tinsel, glowing with candles and half hiding its crisp, fragrant needles, the incomparable perfection of spheres that shone like far-off other worlds, red and blue and green and gold.....

Cynics say that miracles are all man-made - contrived like a Christmas tree hidden in a closet and flashed upon wondering kids. That even the Christmas spirit is only a spell we work up to bemuse one another - and then fall for ourselves, like so many simple children. What of it? So much the better! If mankind, by its own devoted labor, can induce in itself - if only for a day - an all-pervading spirit of friendship and cheer and good will and loving kindness, that alone is a very great miracle. It is the kind of Miracle that must please above all others Him who knows how miracles are wrought.

Robert Keith Levitt