A CHRISTMAS STORY

There is a little more quality here, if scarcely more substance, in this smaller-than-a-story-more-than-a-greeting-card seasonal commodity. Miss Porter's commemorative gesture is a true remembrance of the little girl, her niece, who died some fifty years ago before she was six, and it's a fragment of the Christmas legend-ry she shared with her (The Withy Tree, etc.) before taking her to shop for a present for her mother. While a sad-sweet ""lament,"" it is also a rebuke and a reminder--""Christmas is what we make of it and this is what we have so cynically made of it."" ... The unfaltering touch--and certified signature.