From Ford Times (Ford Motor Company) November 1960, an excerpt from the essay, Gardenville, New York, by Sally B. Ferris, with paintings by Martha B. Richter, Charles Burchfield's daughters.
"At Christmas time our walks took on added meaning as we indulged in what can only be described as a form of window-peeping. On Christmas night, when the first joyous Christmas excitement had begun to pall, and the enormous dinner rested uneasily on small stomachs, we would bundle up the whole family and walk through our town to admire and exclaim over other people's trees and decorations.On frosty nights, when the snow winked and flashed with the fire of a million tiny stars, and all the Christmas trees seemed more beautiful than ever before, how easy it was for the smallest child to know the true meaning of Christmas.
Our own tree always seemed best to us. It had to be a blue spruce, and it had to be tall enough to touch the ceiling. From our own backyard we gathered pine cones and painted them white, and while the paint was still wet, we sprayed them with silver glitter. Wired to the tree they gave an unusually attractive effect. Even now, we still meet people who remember our Christmas trees."
Janelle Lynch is the 2013 Burchfield resident artist. She has garnered international recognition over the last decade for her large-format photographs of the urban and rural landscape. Widely exhibited, her work is in several public and private collections including the Burchfield Penney, George Eastman House Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, the Fundación Vila Casas, Barcelona, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Salta, Argentina.