To my sunshine-fed California soul, that Christmas stepped ready-made from a fairy tale. The lazy lie-abed sun doesn’t get up until nearly noon, and before the afternoon is half gone it has brushed the snow with streaks of coral and rose, and departed, leaving a glowing memory painted upon the horizon. Petrograd, before she puts on her white cloak of winter, is just a bit shabby. The red and yellow stucco palaces could do with a new coat of paint. Here and there the plaster is badly in need of patching, and the ornate scroll-saw ruffles around the buildings are pathetically like cheap lace. When the beauty of winter comes toppling out of the heavens, she stretches her arms and catches it all. The snow piles in billows on roofs and chimneys, and the icicles hang like crystal fringes from the woodwork. Against the background of the white snow, the faded yellows and the bricky reds become warm and glowing. The little trees in the palace courtyards, stripped of leaves and clothed in swan’s feathers, are like ghosts or shadows of trees, so vague and frail they are. Christmas against such a background must have elements of beauty, however empty the shops or troubled the people. Vera and Ivan take their play-time seriously. Because they wept yesterday and die to-morrow, they play the more lustily to-day. Though revolution raged, machine-guns rattled, and cabinets fell, the ballet pursued its uninterrupted course to the end of the season. At the Marinsky Theater, Karsavina and Smirnova fought to hold the honors of the dance against all new comers, and Shalyapin sang the parts that made him famous in the days of Nicholas with all his accustomed gusto. When the proper time arrived, the winter slides for the children were put in their usual places in the parks, and until the snows came the “American mountain” (roller-coaster) in the Russian Coney Island had done a record-smashing business. Of course they would celebrate Christmas--revolution or no revolution! It never occurred to any one that it might be otherwise. As the date of our holiday drew near, my Russian friends plied me with questions. To the chef of the Hotel Europe, an American mince pie was a riddle without an answer. The Red Cross Mission gave a luncheon for the American correspondents Christmas Day, and Major Allen Wardwell and I were commissioned to go shopping. Colonel Robins suggested turkey, mince pie, and a Christmas tree as desirable trimmings, and we had great fun and many adventures achieving them. The luncheon table was set in a large, high-ceilinged room with red velvet hangings. A crackling fire blazed on the hearth, and in the center of the table a gleaming tree stepped from a mossy bed of crimson tulips. We pulled down the blinds and shut out war and revolution, while we laughed merrily over the Russian conception of mince pie, and wondered secretly, each in his own terms, what they were doing off there across the world at home.