Christmas and Christmas trees have always been magical for me. My very first Christmas trees are still very vivid in my mind. We have to go back to the 1940s. I was 5 or 6 years old, and we lived on the third floor of a cold water flat in Newark. I remember shopping for a Christmas tree with my father. That was a time when all trees were real and for sale on empty corner lots, usually in front of a rusty oil drum with a blazing fire to keep the tree guy and customers warm.
My father picked out a beautiful, huge tree, and he asked the man how much. Five dollars, he replied.
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