Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, January 2, 1936

The Christmas Tree is still up, and the children turn on the lights in the evening. The actual Christmas season passes in a haze, unrealized, it is only now that it is gone, and I sit and look at the tree that I begin to feel that I missed something. Or is it the realization that the most valuable part of the Christmas season is lost, that one can only get it as a child? I look at the lights, the baubles, and the dusky green on the needles – so quiet, almost with a personality – as tho it was thinking, and there comes an indefinable nostalgic memory of the security a child has in the loving care of a parent- a retreat in these dark branches where a child can sit and contentedly dream of the outside world of snow, and skating and sled-riding.

Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, January 2, 1936