TWICE CHRISTMAS.

The black dog of Christmas jumps in the window, right on schedule, around eleven in the morning, or maybe sneaks in the front door you've just opened to admit the granddaughter who's here on time, after all--her cheek cold from outdoors--before the serious present-opening. It's still skulking around a little later when you make a tour of the room to pick up the ribbons and bright ripped-off wrappings and the cards (well, save the cards) and walk back to stuff them deep into the big kitchen wastebasket. Come on, this is Christmas, so brighten up, can't you? Listen to them, out there. Smile. Back before this one--on Christmas Day, 1931, let's say--the day began for my sister Nancy and me and our father with the stockings. Our narrow brownstone-house living room had a mantelpiece made of some dark oaky wood, with carved wreaths on the flankings, on either side of the fireplace: exactly the right thing, I noticed again, for this one day of the year. Then the tree, then the presents, then the lonely aunt and weird old cousins arriving to be cheered up on this special day. The goose, well carved by Father. The plum pudding, with bits of burnt matches floating in the brandy that at last takes light. The hard sauce. Now Nancy and I exchange a glance and get up and leave the others; upstairs we take our stuffed shopping bags and tiptoe back down and grab our coats. Goodbye, goodbye. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Out on the empty, sunlit street, there's a stripy blue taxi just coming by. We jump in and fly downtown. There's no Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza, because there's no Rockefeller Plaza yet--no Radio City at all. Maybe there's a tree at the far end of Madison Square, but it's not lit up or anything. Never mind. I look at Nancy--she's just turned fifteen--whose brown eyes are glittering, the way they do when she's excited. Yay, Christmas!

Back to our own tree, earlier that day. My father had kept the Victorian ornaments of his childhood--the fragile and now tarnished brownish-crimson or dark-green balls, the glass icicles, a bent-velvet Santa with an ancient bit of rippled peppermint candy undetachably stuck inside his pack. Also the snap-on candleholders, which we fitted with fresh little candles and affixed carefully to the outer balsam branches, pinching the springy snaps until the thing stood upright on the swaying branch, with nothing above it to catch fire and bring on disaster and the Fire Department. Father had filled a white enamel kitchen pail with water and put it down, with the invariable short-handled dish mop beside it, next to the tree. Then we lit the candles, one by one. We started opening presents, but soon my father broke off to pick up the little mop and begin putting out the candles, one by one, as they burned low. Already, I thought--I think I thought--he looked grave at what was to come.

Downtown, a left onto Eighth Street and ring the ...