The Christmas Tree by Jill; Julie; Weber Salamon

Introduction
    While I was writing The Christmas Tree in 1996, the mystery of life’s journeys was very much on my mind. My daughter was in first grade and my son was one year old. I had just completed a memoir about my parents’ journey from Eastern Europe to the tiny town (population seven hundred) in southern Ohio where I grew up. Since 1975, New York City had become my home. I had a good career as a journalist and a promising start as an author.
    My expectations for this novella were modest. Could I tell a good story that adults and children would enjoy and find worthwhile? I had no expectations beyond that, certainly not for what followed. The Christmas Tree would become a New York Times bestseller, translated into a dozen languages. Two decades later people would still be writing affectionate reviews, and I would continue to receive letters from people all over the world, telling me how much the book meant to them—and to report that now their children are reading it to their own families.
    The older I get, the more amazed I am by the enduring power of stories, for both readers and writers. Creating this book provided me a way to connect the raw beauty and uncertainty of my rural childhood to the fulfillment I’d found in New York, a city that can be harsh or awe-inspiring, depending on the day. Many of the places you’ll read about in these pages were built on memories of Adams County, Ohio, as well as teachers I’ve valued and friends I’ve loved. The writing also helped me come to terms with the inevitability of loss. For each reader, the story will have a different meaning, based on a different set of experiences, yet all connected by one text.
    The Christmas Tree was the first time I’d worked with an illustrator. How lucky I was to be matched up with Jill Weber, a gifted artist who would become a friend and future collaborator. She lives on a farm in New Hampshire; I still live in Manhattan. We didn’t meet face-to-face until after we’d finished the entire book. After that, we continued on our separate careers. But we always stayed in touch and a few years ago reunited to collaborate again on books ( Cat in the City and Mutt’s Promise ) aimed at children in the eight- to twelve-year-old range.
    We are grateful to Open Road for reissuing The Christmas Tree in time to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its original publication. Jill’s son, Remy, had just graduated college when the book first came out; now he has children old enough to read it on their own. My daughter, Roxie, has become a teacher and my son, Eli, is a new college graduate, ready to begin life as an adult. Jill’s husband, Frank Weber, and my husband, Bill Abrams, continue to provide invaluable love and encouragement—and that most precious commodity, a fine-tuned sense of humor. As always, this book (and everything else we do) is dedicated to them, the families we hold most dear.
    Julie Salamon
    March 2016

Prologue

    I’m not a sentimental man, but when I saw her standing there, under the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, I started to cry.
    She was not a young woman; in fact, she was fairly old. But her eyes stayed fixed on the star at the top of the tree with the curiosity and amazement of a child who has just discovered something new and wonderful. With her bright, bony face barely poking out of her black habit she looked like a little bird next to that giant tree. Only later would I understand exactly what lay behind the sparkle in her eyes, what it all meant to her.
    Her name was Sister Anthony, and she was a friend of mine.
    An unlikely friend, I suppose. I’m still not sure she ever knew what she did for me. But that’s how it goes, I guess. You’re touched by something or someone here and react to it over there and most times you don’t connect one thing to the other. With Sister Anthony I knew, and I am grateful for that.
    Forgive me. I’m getting ahead