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I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs,bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin) perched among the boughs,as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broadfaced little men, much more agree-able in appearance than many real men—and no wonder, for their heads came off, and showed them to be full of sugarplums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines,books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweatmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were humming-tops,needle-cases, penwipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquetholders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, “There is everything and more.”
Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider: “What do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days?”
Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the so dreamy brightness of its top—for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward toward the earth—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!
All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green holly and red berries, is the tumbler, with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn’t lie down, but, whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me—when I affected to laugh very much, but in my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside him is that snuffbox out of which there sprang a counselor in a black gown,with a red cloth mouth, wide open, who was not to be endured on any terms, but could not be put away either! for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of mammoth snuffboxes in dreams, when least expected. Nor is the frog with cobbler’s wax on his tail far off; for there was no knowing where he wouldn’t jump; and when he flew over the candle and came upon one’s hand with that spotted back—red on a green ground—he was horrible. The cardboard lady in a blue silk skirt who was stood up against the candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same branch, was milder and was beautiful; but I can’t say as much for the larger cardboard man who used to be hung against the wall and pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that nose of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very often did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to be alone with.
I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers—there he is!—was made of, then! His hide was real to the touch, I recollect.And the great black horse with the round red spots all over him—the horse that I could even get upon—I never wondered what had brought him to that strange condition, or thought that such a horse was not commonly seen at Newmarket. The four horses of no color, next to him,that went in the wagon of cheeses, and could be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of fur for their tails and other bits for their manes, and to stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they were brought home for a Christmas present. They were all right, then; neither was their harness nailed into their chests, as appears to be the case now. The tinkling works of the music cart I did find out to be made of quill toothpicks and wire; and I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt-sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down, headforemost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person—though good-natured; but the Jacob’s Ladder,next him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one another, each developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
Ah! The doll’s house!—of which I was not proprietor, but where I visited. I don’t admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and doorsteps, and a real balcony—greener than I ever see now, except at watering places;and even they afford but a poor imitation. And though it did open all at once—the entire house-front—it was but to shut it up again. Even open, there were three distinct rooms in it: a sitting room and bedroom,elegantly furnished, and, best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils, and a tin mancook in profile, who was always going to fry two fish. What justice have I done to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured,each with its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss!Could all the temperance societies of these later days, united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid, and which made tea nectar? And if I did once shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with consternation, by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for it!
Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat black letters to begin with! “A was an archer and shot at a frog.” Of course he was. He was an apple pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little versatility that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe—like Y, who was always confined to a yacht or a yew tree; and Z condemned forever to be a zebra or a zany. But now the very tree itself changes, and becomes a bean-stalk—the marvelous bean-stalk up which Jack climbed to the Giant’s house! And now those dreadfully interesting, doubleheaded giants, with their clubs over their shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs in a perfect throng, dragging knights and ladies home for dinner by the hair of their heads. And Jack—how noble, with his sword of sharpness and his shoes of swiftness!
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy color of the cloak in which —the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket —Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite,and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red RidingHood, I should have known perfect bliss. But it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the wolf in the Noah’s ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded. Oh, the wonderful Noah’s ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof,and needed to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there; and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch—but what was that against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant; the lady-bird; the butterfly—all triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent,that he usually tumbled forward and knocked down all the animal creation! Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers;and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string!
Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree—not Robin Hood,not Valentine, but an Eastern king with a glittering scimitar and turban.By Allah! two Eastern kings; for I see another, looking over his shoulder!Down upon the grass, at the tree’s foot, lies the full length of a coal-black giant, stretched asleep, with his head in a lady’s lap; and near them is a glass box fastened with four locks of shining steel, in which he keeps the lady prisoner when he is awake. I see the four keys at his girdle now. The lady makes signs to the two kings in the tree, who softly descend. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.
Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me.All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beefsteaks are to be thrown down into the Valley of Diamonds,that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them.
Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician and the little fire that will make the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date with whose stone the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie’s invisible son. My very rocking-horse—there he is, with his nostrils turned completely inside-out!—should have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his so father’s Court. Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light!
On the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick. Schoolbooks shut up; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time, there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while the world lasts; and they do! so Yonder they dance and play upon the branches of my tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances and plays too!
( Charles Dickens )
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a great English writer. He gained much of the material for his novels while a reporter on a London newspaper.As a child, Dickens was neglected and received very little education, but before he was thirty years old he was the most popular writer in England.His vivid imagination and keen human sympathy give to his writings a peculiar interest and charm. Perhaps no other writer has made the characters in his stories so lifelike; they are real men, women, and children,not imaginary dwellers in an unreal world. “A Christmas Tree” appeared in House-hold Words, a magazine which Dickens edited, in 1850.
fascination : being very interested in something
mammoth : huge, very big
garnished : decorated
sinister : evil
versatility : able to do many things
inadvertently : accidentally
A) Answer the following questions.
1) What was Dickens thinking about when he returned home?
2) How did his “shadowy tree” appear to grow?
3) On what part of the tree were toys?
4) How do we know Dickens loved children?
5) What do you think is the funniest part of the story?
B) Summary—Write short summaries for the various parts of the story.
1) Christmas Tree Today ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2) Christmas Tree When I Was a Child _______________________________________________________________________________________________
3) The Arabian Knights ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
C) Toys—Select one of the toys Dickens describes in this story and draw a picture of it.