We never had our Christmas tree up this early. In October, small trees would start to appear at every intersection, bound to the four signal posts. On the day after Thanksgiving, the three local high school bands—Liberty, Freedom, BeCaHi—would alternate years performing at the tree lighting ceremony. Freshman year of high school, part of the band’s first company, wind in our bearskins, the lights twinkling off the gold buttons of our Grenadier uniforms, off our polished black shoes, off my French horn’s bell as we ran through the standard carols. And before the star on South Mountain became the seal of the city, it too would have its moment, sudden blaze at the smudged haze where charcoal mountain crest meets midnight sky. There were also four electric candles, steel shapes staggered in a diamond shape, outlined in light – four here in the plaza next to the public library; four on the Hill-to-Hill bridge into South Bethlehem; four near Hellertown upon entering the city. But only one of the four would be lit. Lit for the first week of Advent, that forgotten liturgical season before Christmas.
