The Three Christmas Trees Of Ann Blyth
This year’s tree promises to be Ann’s very best but its glory cannot dim the memories of three other shining trees. Trees that made Christmas such a special time for Mrs. McNulty. As she and Dr. Jim trim the giant evergreen with precious ornaments, some saved from Ann’s childhood, her thought will travel back to last year when tiny Timmy blessed their home, back to her first Christmas as Mrs. McNulty, and farther back to that memorable tree-trimming when Dr. Jim proposed.
This year Timmy will be old enough to stare in awe at the twinkling lights and brighten at the presents chosen with such love and care by Ann. (His mother hopes so!) “He will probably go waddling into the living room clutching that little teapot,he loves so much. He walks now, you know,” Ann says with considerable pride. “And who knows? Maybe under the tree he will find something that he will love better than that battered tin pot.”
Ann is praying for a very special family present. When you ask what she wants for Christmas her face lights up with inner happiness and she smiles slowly, “What more could I possibly want than a baby?” She hopes that the new baby due early in December will put in an appearance more or less on time. “It’s only because I would so love to be home on Christmas and so many times I have had to be away. It would be so wonderful to be home with Jim and Timmy.”
Oddly enough, Ann’s happiest Christmas Day was spent away from home. But Dr. Jim’s love (and ring) went with her to that loneliest spot in the world, White Sands, New. Mexico, the proving grounds for the atomic bomb. It was Christmas, 1952, but Ann, as she had done all through the war, was entertaining servicemen—with Jack Benny’s troupe. There was a difference this time; her heart was singing because of that ring on her third finger, left hand.
A week before she hadn’t hoped for such a Christmas surprise. Jim had come to dinner at home with Uncle Pat and Aunt Cis and they were going to trim the tree afterward. Ann had planned his favorite meal but he hadn’t said a word about it. Even Uncle Pat and Aunt Cis noticed how quiet Jim was and so they left the two young people alone to trim the tree. Ann remembers suspecting something was wrong. The Doctor was hanging the ornaments in the most absentminded manner, putting two or three red ones together, big ones at the top and little ones at the bottom. She didn’t know then that a ring was burning a hole in his pocket. It wasn’t until after they’d finished trimming the tree and he was halfway out the door that he turned suddenly and said, “I have something for you—will you wear it for me?”
And so, three years ago on the desolate proving grounds in New Mexico, Ann believed she was having the happiest Christmas she would ever know. Now she admits two others have matched it.
The McNulty family is only three years old but its traditions go deep and are nourished by the openly sentimental love you feel the minute you walk in the front door. A door that at Christmas will be decorated in the spirit of the season. Last year Ann fixed it up to look like a huge package, complete with bow. “I wouldn’t think of having an untrimmed door at Christmas,” she says.
Christmases past
The first Christmas Ann and Dr. Jim spent together set the stage for all the Christmases to come. They were living in the new house at Toluca Lake. Then, as now, Ann and Dr. Jim went to midnight mass at St. Charles church on Christmas Eve, then came home and opened their gifts under the tree. Before they went to bed that night they hung three stockings on the mantel—a big one, a middle-sized one and a tiny one. That last was for Timmy who wasn’t born until the following June. It was wonderful to be together that first Christmas they were married but Ann cherishes the next one even more because Timmy had completed the family circle. True, he was only six months old and pretty unimpressed by tinsel and lights, but Christmas is for children, even tiny ones, and Ann rejoiced in wrapping presents for her small son. Last year, flushed with motherhood, Ann bought piles of toys for all the children in the family. “The day itself is wonderful enough, but to me the joy of getting ready for Christmas is so very important. Thinking of the gifts that people will enjoy, finding gifts that make you think of them,” explains Ann. This year, she says, she’s more self-controlled and has promised to check with parents first and give more practical gifts. But knowing Ann, you know she won’t forget the little extras and luxuries that make Christmas the joy it is. She has purchase almost a hundred gifts for her eighteen nieces and nephews, not to mention the assorted uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, as well as Jim’s family. Ann loves being part of a big family and she goes all out at Christmas. During the week before Christmas the McNultys hold open house, a gay, warm, fragrant gift of hospitality to all who know them.
The tree
The tree will be set in the bay window of the living room, where the warm glow from its bright lights will cheer everyone passing by. The ornaments include a little house with figures and lights inside, old-fashioned birds with their spun glass wings. The tree is important to Ann because no matter how poor she and her mother and sister might have been there was always a tree. “I don’t think I ever missed getting things I wanted in those days,” Ann says. “They were lean but happy years—there was always so much love floating around.”
The tree will be trimmed early in the week because Ann believes in making Christmas last as long as possible. “It’s fun for the children but it’s fun for the grownups, too.” Then Ann smiles, “For me, at least.” Uncle Pat will string lights on the two big camellia bushes that guard the front door the same night Ann and Jim trim the tree.
Ann loves setting up the manger as much as trimming the tree and this year the project has special significance. A friend of the McNultys, a bishop, sent them lovely figurines of the holy family from Europe and these will be used to signify the immortal story.
On Christmas Eve Ann and Dr. Jim will attend midnight mass and open their gifts together when they come home. This will be their very private Christmas together. And Christmas morning, too, will be shining and peaceful when baby Timmy opens his stocking.
Christmas Day
After the intimacy of Christmas Eve and the next morning the McNultys will once more open their hearts to a hoard of friends and relatives. Uncle Dennis Day might possibly go the rounds of the family in a Santa Claus suit to delight the children. And in the afternoon Ann and Jim will do a little visiting themselves, delivering gifts. “I hope I’ll be able to go,” breathes Ann. “One never knows.” In the evening comes the traditional turkey with all the trimmings, shared by Aunt Cis and Uncle Pat and probably a few relatives and friends. It’ll be topped off by pumpkin pie and raisin pie and plum pudding as only Aunt Cis can make it. Ann still remembers, in long-ago autumns, watching her aunt sift flour and chop suet and citron and measure the spices and steam the pudding, which was put in a mold and kept in the cellar until the big day arrived.
For some, there is a letdown after Christmas, but not for Ann. She goes right on living it in spirit. “It grows more wonderful every year. I think the longer you are married the more you realize how wonderful life is with your family. And consequently Christmas itself becomes fuller and more beautiful with every passing year. I think it is the most beautiful day in the year, and it would be to most people, really, if they stopped to think about what it really is. Despite any other beliefs they might have, I don’t see how they can help thinking, this is quite wondrous.”
It is indeed. And with her very real Christmas spirit, Ann has asked us to send you a message that she extends to everyone of you in this wonderful country of ours, a wish that you enjoy and be thankful for a very joyous Christmas. And to Mrs. McNulty goes our Christmas wish that this, her fourth Christmas tree, will be the most glorious of all.
THE END
—BY IMOGENE COLLINS
It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1956
