Christmas on Jane Street Read online

  Dedication

  To our neighbors on Jane Street who have become part of our extended family. Your caring, sharing, and love are the reasons why we have returned each Christmas for more than a decade, forming unexpected bonds and friendships to last a lifetime.—BR

  For my mother, Marie Olesen Urbanski Whittaker, for her love of art, life, and Christmas.—WU

  Acknowledgments

  We would like to thank Meaghan Dotvling, who brought the idea and the two authors together and whose vision became a reality in this book. Thanks also to Charlotte Sheedy and Jody Hotchkiss for their stellar professional guidance and to Laureen Connelly Rowland for her generosity and help. Our spouses, Frank Levering and Patti Romp, deserve enormous appreciation for their invaluable input and endless patience. And special thanks go to our children, Ellie, Henry, and Timmy Romp, and Henry Urbanski Levering, who are, after all, our inspiration.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1. Our Village in the Village

  2. The Corner Tree

  3. The Candle Stand

  4. Night on the town

  5. The Long Night

  6. A Sranger in the Family

  7. Our Conspiracy of Kindness

  8. Christmas in Vermont

  Afterword

  About the Authors

  Other Books by Wanda Urbanska

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE WARM, WONDERFUL, REAL-LIFE TALE OF THE FAMILY THAT BRINGS THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT TO LIFE ON A STREET CORNER IN MANHATTAN.

  Every holiday season for nearly twenty years, Billy Romp, his wife, and their three children have spent nearly a month living in a tiny camper and selling Christmas trees on Jane Street in New York City. They arrive from Vermont the day after Thanksgiving and leave just in time to make it home for Christmas morning—and for a few weeks they transform a corner of the Big Apple into a Frank Capra-esque small town alive with heartwarming holiday spirit.

  Christmas on Jane Street is about the transformative power of love—love of parent and child, of merchant and customer, of stranger and neighbor. The ideal Christmas story, it is about the lasting and profound difference that one person can make to a family and one family can make to a community.

  A lovely, lovingly illustrated little gem of a book, this delightful tenth anniversary edition of a beloved Christmas classic tells the poignant, inspiring story of an unforgettable family and the warm, wide circle of friends who have welcomed them to the neighborhood.

  “A cross between It’s a Wonderful Life and

  A Christmas Carol.” —USA Today

  Prologue

  When my daughter lifted the green ribbon on my gift that Christmas morning, my heart started racing. Despite what I do for a living, I’ve never been big on presents—giving or receiving them. Up until now. This gift meant more to me than any Christmas gift I’d ever given, or received. This gift carried a message I didn’t want either of us ever to forget.

  Ellie has always been a creative, confident, somewhat headstrong girl. And she’s highly intuitive. At least, she’s always been able to read me. So when she hesitated between untying the ribbon and lifting the box lid, when her eyes caught mine to be sure I was watching the unveiling, I knew that even before removing the present from the box she had guessed at its significance.

  I’m not sure that Ellie—my oldest child and only daughter—understood what she’d given me that Christmas. It wasn’t anything you could wrap in a box or bundle in tissue and drop into one of these shiny new bags. But I had received something of enormous value. Like most milestones, this one wasn’t easy to reach. To be sure, my young daughter had put me through the paces that holiday season. But looking back on it now, every step brought me closer to seeing life in a whole new light. In the end, Ellie helped me rediscover the wonder of Christmas and the sacredness of my family.

  It may sound peculiar coming from me—someone as close to being the bearer of Christmas tidings as you’ll ever find, short of wearing a red suit and a white beard—that I’d ever struggled with the meaning of it all. But I did. You see, I sell Christmas trees in New York City. The season is short and intense but the rewards are considerable. A good season can make my year.

  For the last ten years, my wife, three children, and I have journeyed down from our farmhouse in Vermont to set up a stand on the corner of Jane Street and Eighth Avenue in Greenwich Village. We arrive the day after Thanksgiving and leave on Christmas Eve. Our sidewalk is next to the Jane Street Community Garden, where our freshly cut trees stand like a battalion of toy soldiers, ready to go to work spreading their cheer. For the twenty-eight days that we’re here, we try to create a little Vermont Village in Greenwich Village, an oasis of goodwill and greenery amid the city chaos and acres of asphalt.

  I’m a mostly modest man, but I will tell you this: I have this gift for matching the right tree with the right customer. The first few years, I didn’t recognize it as a talent, then I shrugged it off as nothing out of the ordinary. Finally—and this is where Ellie’s gift to me comes in—I began to see my ability as something God-given, something to nurture and cherish.

  This is the way I work: I adjust to each person’s pace. My customer leads, and I follow. Some people deliberate long and hard over their trees, and I stay right with them. Others point to one and say, “That’s it.” End of discussion. And that’s okay, too.

  For me, a Christmas tree is more than a piece of merchandise. Though they all come with the same basic equipment—a trunk and branches and needles—they vary tremendously. Small, scraggly trees need your love and attention, while the tall, imposing ones add grandeur to a foyer or living room. Then there are trees that may not be symmetrical but get you right in the heart because they have soul. They’ve endured hardship and sing ballads about it, if only you’ll listen. The ones I like best have this quality. They’re like people with character etched on their faces.

  The majority of my customers come looking for help. I put on my listening cap and ask questions. That’s where my skills come into play. Do you have high ceilings or low? Is your apartment drafty or warm? Do you have young children or boisterous pets? What ornaments do you plan to hang? When I’m with customers, I’m completely focused on getting them the very best tree possible, the right tree for them.

  If they’re looking for a woody, aromatic fragrance, I steer them toward the most popular Christmas tree, the Balsam fir. If, however, they want a subtler, sweeter smell, I recommend my personal favorite—the Douglas fir. If they desire a sophisticated tree, tall and regal with strong stiff branches that won’t bow under the weight of heavy ornaments, I trumpet the king of trees—the Fraser fir. This royal never sheds. “Leave it up till Easter!” I tease.

  I’ve found that with customers—as with life itself—spirit matters as much as, if not more than, the product. If I can get people talking and laughing, if I can get them into a good mood, they’ll buy my tree.

  I bill myself as a “full-service stand.” It’s an accurate description and also opens the door for holiday joking and jesting. I launch into a litany of things I do for free. “I’ll deliver your tree,” I tell them. “Set it up in your stand, hang your ornaments, and sprinkle on tinsel.” If I haven’t gotten a laugh by then, I continue. “I’ll make your eggnog, wrap your presents, write your Christmas cards.” By then, even the most harried New Yorker loosens up. Another thing I’ve learned is that it’s harder to create good cheer in others if you don’t feel it yourself.

  As anyone knows who’s worked even one day selling Christmas trees, you’re not just selling the product but the season itself. And that’s where I got into trouble on t
his particular year. Because I am so good at what I do, I have a reputation to uphold. I’m told I have the most successful Christmas tree stand in the city. It’s not that I get into a competition with every other stand in the city. I’m not that foolish. I know that as with any true competition you’re really only competing with yourself. What happened is that I got so caught up in my goal of doing better than I had the year before that I lost touch with the reason people came to me in the first place. I’d lost touch with why I was trying to bring in all this money.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story is about something more basic, more fundamental, than my business and how I separated from, then got back together with, myself. It’s about my daughter and how her Christmas dream woke up the dreamer in me, the one I had let fall asleep. I suspect that my story is not uncommon among all of us who celebrate Christmas, other parents who get so caught up in the frenzy of the season that we lose touch with its true meaning. What I learned from my daughter, I now have the privilege of sharing with you. For this, I am eternally grateful.

  Now I want to tell you about Ellie and the Christmas on Jane Street that changed my life.

  1

  Our Village in the Village

  Ellie and I had spent the morning setting up Christmas trees when she sprang it on me. “Why don’t we rearrange things for a change? Bring the smaller, scragglier trees from Jane Street, where fewer people see them, to Eighth Avenue and move our Fraser and Douglas firs over there.”

  At first, I was only half listening. My mind had jumped ahead to the coming month. Watching the noisy stream of cars, trucks, and taxicabs rushing toward us up Eighth Avenue, I could see the entire season unfold in my mind’s eye. The pace of my business would start out slowly, build steam during the second week, and peak during the two weekends before Christmas. Tree sales would wind down just before the holiday and be limited to harried, last-minute shoppers and a dwindling number of traditionalists who set up their trees on Christmas Eve. But Elbe’s insistent eyes, fixed on mine, demanded a response.

  New York City always seemed to spark new ideas in her—in principle, a good thing. Still, I couldn’t help but wish that this particular brainstorm had occurred at another, less pressured time. On the opening day of tree sales, after most of the stand had been set up, I wasn’t looking for a change in plan. I wanted the stand to be neat, organized, and efficient for business on Saturday. So, while Patti and I try to honor the children’s creative impulses whenever possible, I wasn’t about to alter the layout of the stand.

  “I like your idea, Ellie,” I started, trying to be tactful. “But I’m afraid that we’re going to stick with things the way they are.”

  Her brown eyes fixed on mine and for an instant it was hard to read her. Did she think I was becoming too rigid? Could she be right?

  Over the years, I’ve learned that there are certain rules for selling at Christmastime. The first is that people crave predictability. Naturally, customers want to see the same high-quality trees year after year, preferably sold by the same caring hands. But it is equally important for them to know where to find things. Once they learn the lay of the land, they like to go back to the same spot to find their tree—”just like last year.”

  “But, Daddy,” she protested. “You always say you can learn by trying new things.”

  Though I like to think of myself as flexible and open-minded, the reality is that once I’ve found a system that works, I like to stick to it.

  “True,” I allowed. “But people don’t like unexpected changes—not at Christmas.”

  Ellie gave me a look, then, seeming to understand my point, let it go. “Whatever,” she said, lifting an unadorned wreath from a stack. Using thin wire, she nimbly fastened on a shiny red bow and some pinecones. Then her mind seemed to leap in another direction. “What time is it?” she asked.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out my aging silver pocketwatch—a family heirloom that I always bring to the city for good luck—and told her the time.

  “I was wondering if Emma would be home from school soon,” Ellie said.

  Emma was Ellie’s best friend in Manhattan. Emma lived one block north of the stand on Eighth Avenue in a fancy two-story apartment. The two girls have known each other almost all of their lives. Ellie’s first-ever sleepover was at Emma’s apartment when the girls were four years old, and their friendship has flourished ever since. During the eleven months of the year when we live in Vermont, Ellie and Emma correspond constantly. They always write in any color other than black or blue, and every letter is sealed with some fancy sticker. Horses, rainbows, and hearts were that season’s favorites.

  Just as Ellie and Emma observe rituals in their friendship, I have rituals that serve my business. After many years of experience I have come to believe that there’s a right way and a wrong way to handle trees. In my view, a Christmas tree is not merely a piece of merchandise, it’s something worthy of respect. You start by unloading the truck right. Though the trees are bound into tight versions of themselves for easy travel, once they arrive at the stand, you don’t just pick up these sleeping beauties and hurl them into the street. Instead you unload them gently, careful not to damage the branches. I lay mine lovingly on the sidewalk, where they rest until I decide where to display them.

  We arrange our trees by size, grade, and species, with the large, premium Douglas, Fraser, and Balsam firs occupying the prime “real estate” along the higher-traffic Eighth Avenue sidewalk and “the Charlie Browns” and other bargain merchandise along Jane Street. (The Charlie Browns are the scraggly Balsam trees that stand three and a half feet or less.) We like to joke with price-conscious customers that the Charlie Browns are trees that only a child—or an imaginative adult—could love. So whenever customers buy one, they feel virtuous, like they have adopted a stray cat from the pound.

  Sidewalk space is limited, so I stand most of the trees, still bundled in string, several rows deep and lean them against the tree racks near the street curbs. Then I select a few trees for display to open and bring to life. I lean these against the fence of the Jane Street Community Garden. As pedestrians stroll the sidewalks on Eighth Avenue and Jane Street, they’re flanked by trees on their left and right, as though they are walking through an aromatic Vermont forest.

  When you’re in the Christmas tree business, nothing feels quite as sacred as opening a tree. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the tree exhale as you snip the strings and loosen its branches. In one fell swoop, that tree is transformed from little more than a lifeless bundle to the grand creature, dancing with branches, that God intended it to be.

  This may sound strange, but I try to make a personal connection with each tree that passes through my stand. Each tree has its own individual personality, which I try to coax out when I loosen its branches while holding on to its trunk. There are those special trees you can’t help but get close to. I’ve become so attached to some that I have a hard time letting them go. A regal beauty that deserves pampering shouldn’t wind up in an apartment shared by three roommates under the age of thirty. They might go away weekends and be gone on Christmas Day, leaving the tree alone and thirsty. I’ve seen it happen. Once I even told a customer that the tree she’d selected had been sold when it wasn’t true. I just couldn’t stand to see her take home a tree that was meant for a loving family. It would have been like witnessing a marriage between two people who were fundamentally incompatible and not speaking up when you had the chance.

  A nippy, mid-morning breeze wound its way past the opened trees, ruffling their branches and sending their sweet, woodsy scent out into the street. As Ellie put her finishing touches on the wreaths, I hooked our hose to the spigot across the street and began the water-blasting. With the slight slope to the sidewalks, water ran off and dried quickly. Like the humid forest floor, damp sidewalks make an ideal base for the rows of freshly cut trees. And the humidity seems somehow to blend with and enhance the aroma wafting off the evergreens. Like swee
ping up pine needles, hosing down the sidewalks always feels deeply satisfying, even though you know the task will soon need repeating. It is one of my comforting tree-season rituals.

  Well-wishers and seasonal neighbors had been stopping throughout the day to welcome us back. Philippe Bonsignour, the owner of Bonsignour, the French gourmet food shop across the street, had been the first to greet us that morning. He was about as close to family as it got in Greenwich Village, which meant pretty close. Every year, Philippe opened the arms of his shop to us. All day long, day in and day out, various members of our family trooped in and out of his place. We went there for water, which we drew from the jugs of bottled spring water stored in his basement. We went there for hot beverages and fresh bread, and sometimes just to warm our hands and feet.

  That morning, Philippe delivered two piping-hot croissants swaddled in a red-and-white-checked napkin and a steaming cup of hot chocolate for Ellie and coffee for me. He hugged us both, then gathered up our heavy-duty extension cord and went to work. He carried it across the street, where he plugged it into a power outlet in his basement, then brought it back outside and looped the cord up in the high tree branches over Jane Street and ran it down a lamppost and into our home away from home. That year, like all the others before, I offered to pay him for supplying electricity. That year, like every other, he refused.

  “You’re good for business,” he said, minimizing his generosity. “People come from all over for your trees and, while they’re here, they stop in and buy my Christmas treats.”

  Philippe was right, of course. But the fact remained that his business would have benefited from our being there whether or not he helped us. “Good for business” struck me as a kind of masculine way of masking kindly acts, expressing care without having to reveal deep feelings. I could always spot it because I’d done the same thing myself.