Back in the late 70’s I watched the Today Show. One Christmas morning in 76 or 77 an actress named Marian Seldes sat in a chair facing the camera and read aloud a “Christmas” story. I was so caught up with the story at the time I did not think to make note of the name or author. I have written/e-mailed the Today Show numerous times asking for help and received only a form letter response. Short of figuring out how to contact Ms. Seldes (I really do not want to go that route, invasion of privacy and all) I am hard pressed to come up with how to find it. So here goes, what I recall of the story.
A mother, little boy and little girl live in an apartment ( maybe NYC.) They are very poor and cannot afford a tree nor any decorations or presents. The little girl keeps asking her brother when Santa is coming. When she wakes on the real Christmas morning the brother tells her, no this is not Christmas. She wakes up with all the noise coming from outside on New Years Eve and asks her brother what’s all the noise. He tells her it was Santa. She walks into the living room that is now decorated with all the discarded Christmas trees from the neighborhood that he collected.
A Christmas favorite of mine has always been Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story “The Blue Carbuncle,” a clever, funny mystery set in that season. Conan Doyle makes you “see” Victorian London just as well as Dickens did.
No it was not A Tree Grown in Brooklyn. In that story Francie, the daughter is older than the son, Neely. There is a passage about Christmas trees, but not in the same way as the story told on TV.
I too enjoy “The Blue Carbuncle.”
IMDB to the rescue. That resource always amazes me at how much info it contains!
Anyway, if you go to Ms. Seldes’ IMDB entry here
and scroll down to “Self,” you’ll see she appeared on the today show twice: once in 1972 and once on Christmas Day 1980. Click on the 1980 appearance and then click on the plot summary and it lists all the guests that day and what they performed. Here’s what it says about Ms. Seldes:
“Marian Seldes reads from “A Christmas Tree for Lydia” by Elizabeth Enright”
Just saying Thank you does not begin to express my gratitude. I do use imdb frequently; however it never occurred to me to check there for this. Thank you so very much.
You’re very welcome. I actually looked her up on IMDB initially to try to find her contact information and just got lucky from there.
By the way, Amazon has a few copies of the book available, mostly used. They look to be fairly expensive, though.
The story sounds intriguing. I think I’m going to have to search my local library for it. Reading your description makes me want to read the story too.
However you get a copy, through Amazon or the library (or maybe Santa? ), I hope you thoroughly enjoy reading it. I know how it feels to find a treasured story or book you thought had been lost to you…kind of like finding a long lost friend.
In a similar sort of thing, a few years ago I ended up paying about a hundred dollars for Oddkins. I had the book as a child, but at some point it disappeared from my collection, leaving only fond memories.
The original was in color: the problem is that the color master has been lost. The B&W copies are uniformly poor quality. There are people out there who recorded the TV show, but finding them is not easy.
), I hope you thoroughly enjoy reading it. I know how it feels to find a treasured story or book you thought had been lost to you…kind of like finding a long lost friend.
