We are not going to have Christmas at our home this year, I thought sadly as I looked out my bedroom window toward the West. My mother was sick and it was getting dusk and almost Christman eve. There had been none of the usual exciting preparations, no Christmas tree, not a gingerbread mand made or a special cake.

Then I saw it, a Christmas tree silhouetted against the late afternoon darkening sky. It was on top of a load of logs papa was bringing in from the woods. I wanted to shout and sing out to my two younger brothers and baby sister but didn't say a word to anyone as it was papa's surprise.

What a happy Christmas eve we had. Papa had bought oysters the day before when he had driven Dodger (our swiftest horse) for the six mile trek into St. Albans in our fast cutter. Mama was able to eat some of the hot oyster stew.

We popped corn and strung it with cranberries to decorate the tree. My older sister got out the tinsel and ornments, there were candles left from last year.

"You had better hang up your stockings to be ready for Santa," so we scurried to take our stockings and get into our night shirts as papa suggested. He read the Christmas story from the bible as we all sat at his feet.

Christmas morning was glorious. We each found an orange, and walnuts in our stockings. Every child had a chore to help make Christmas dinner. We had chicken pie by my older sister and papa. Mama felt able to come down for dinner. We all had a package under the tree. We all had a new set of long legged underware and a pair of mittens. Finally, we were allowed to open a big box wrapped in red tissue paper and inside was a string of beautiful shiny sleighbells. We're going for a sleigh ride. Mama was bundled in her big fur coat, covered with a buffalo foot. What a thrill it was to hear our new sleigh bells jungle as we glided over the snowy road. "Merry Christmas!" we shouted as we passed our neighbor's houses and remembered it as one of the happiest Christmasses of my life.

This story took place in 1896 when my mother, Daisy Hilliker now 96, was 10 years old.

Natalie McLure