Chris was mellow about life, and always in my father’s office for some infraction (my father was the principal of our school and Chris was a regular resident of the supply closet where he had to endure isolation for talking in class—and which, Chris being Chris, gave him a chance to nap). Chris also had beaver teeth that he always bared in his perennial good-humored smile.

Sure enough when we got to the lot that night in the bitter Chicago cold, there was Chris wearing more scarves than my yiayia and gloves like a hockey goalie.

“Hey, Jimmy,” he said to me, with his smile of beaver teeth sparkling in the glare of the Christmas lights strung around the lot. “Hey, Dr. Michalakis,” he said to my father. “Hey, Mrs. Michalakis,” he said to my mother. “Hey, Helen,” he said to my sister.

“Hey, Chris,” we said to him in chorus.

“I’ll pick you out a Christmas tree,” he said.

And we followed him and his gloves through the forest of Christmas trees tipped against the cyclone fence.

“I’ll pick you out the biggest tree,” he said.

“We don’t want the biggest tree,” my father said.

“You don’t want the biggest tree?” he said. “You want the biggest tree?” he said to me.

What did I have to do with it?

“I’ll pick you out the biggest tree,” he said, anyway.

And he brought us to a tree that towered over all the others and looked as proud as if it still lorded it over all the other trees in the forest.

“How about this one?” Chris said, his teeth gleaming like toilet bowl enamel.

And we all stared in wonder at the king of Christmas trees and fantasized a little about it sparkling in our very own living room and looking just as regal as the Christmas tree that towered over the entrance to the Marshall Field’s in Oak Park.

But, of course, it would never fit in our apartment, and it was way over our budget, so Chris being the clairvoyant tree salesman that he was, waved his goalie mitt at the big tree in dismissal and then took us to a little Balsam fir that had a little red ribbon tied to it.

“What’s wrong with this one?” said my father.

“Nobody wants it,” said Chris with a shrug, “cause it’s little. But I like it, so I put a ribbon on it.”

And he pawed it lovingly with his goalie mitt, and smoothed down the branches, and we began to feel sorry for it, because it was a spry little tree full of personality, and it had a little red ribbon that made it very pretty.

“I don’t want that,” my mother said bluntly.

But guess which tree we took home? Because it would have broken our hearts to leave the little tree out there that cold winter night, and because we could just picture it sitting in the space of our apartment with all our lights glowing on it—Chris, being the tree salesman that he was, had made us see that and had us all grinning happily with our teeth freezing like him as he tied it up for us and we carried it home across the street.

“Have a good Christmas, Dr. Michalakis!” he yelled from across the street. “Have a good Christmas, Mrs. Michalakis!…Have a good Christmas, Helen!…Have a good Christmas, Jimmy!”

And his voice rang in the night like a Christmas bell and made it a part of our memorable holiday that year.

Dimitri C. Michalakis