"Robert F. Young - O Little Town of Bethlehem II" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

The author says: "I am retired, but writers of course never fully retire, they just
go right on writing. My typewriter provides me with a sort of raison d'etre. Many
people, when they retire, move to Florida, where they meet people with whom they
play golf. I suppose that if a person looks hard enough, s/he can find a raison d'etre
in a golf ball. Be that as it may, if I ever move to Florida, I plan to take my typewriter
with me." The following story is a harsh look at a future on the verge of repeating
history.

This morning I take Sandy and Drew into the woods to look for a Christmas tree. The woods are full
of them, but finding a good one is difficult, for most of the conifers indigenous to this part of McMullen's
Planet lack the natural symmetry of their counterparts on Earth.
Sandy is ten, Drew eight. Christmas Eve is tomorrow night and they can hardly wait for it to come,
even though no Santa Claus will come down our chimney. When I reminded them of this, they assured
me it made no difference. Christmas this year, they said, will be special enough in itself. In this they are
quite right.
Usually when you go into the woods you see some of the Stoops. One of their villages is only a mile
from our settlement and the women and children often dig up tubers out of the forest floor. But the
woods are empty of them today. No doubt the number of colonists looking for Christmas trees scared
them away.
I spot my neighbor, Jake Best. He has his three kids with him and he has just cut down a six-foot
"spruce." "Merry Christmas, Glen," he calls out to me.
"Merry Christmas, Jake," I call back.
We find a conifer which is almost pyramidal and just about the right height, and I set to work with my
ax. Sandy and Drew insist on carrying it home all by themselves. My wife Melissa meets us at the door.
There was a rain last night and she tells us to wipe our feet good before we go in. Our house is a small,
square, one-story building without any trimmings, but we are proud of it. Like all the other houses of the
settlement and the two churches and the various other buildings, it is built out of plastiwood. Plastiwood,
while ideal for setting up a colony in a hurry, isn't a viable building material for cold and windy regions
because it's so thin and light, but on this part of McMullen's Planet, winter is barely distinguishable from
fall and a close sister to spring, and throughout the year only breezes blow.

After supper I put up the tree in the living room and Melissa and the two kids begin trimming it with
strings of popcorn and homemade ornaments. I leave them to their task and head for the square to help
trim the big community tree which some of the other colonists and I put up yesterday. The square is in the
center of the settlement. It is surfaced with gravel which we hauled in from a nearby creek. We couldn't,
of course, bring cement with us because of its weight, and our buildings, unfortunately, lack footings. But
we've begun making our own cement, and since it's too late to pour footings, we plan instead to cover
the gravel surface of the square with a thick layer of concrete.
The tree is about fifteen feet tall. The children are excited about it and would be running all over the
square if Joe Holtz, the mayor, hadn't put it off limits till tomorrow night. Before we put up the tree we
affixed the aluminum-foil star, which we brought from Earth, to the peak. We also brought a big box of
real ornaments and twenty packages of tinsel and two dozen sets of Christmas tree lights. The Agency
for the Development of Extraterrestrial Acres (ADEA) didn't object because the extra weight was
negligible.
After we finish trimming the tree, we position the figures of the crèche beside it. ADEA had set up a
howl about the creche, saying we should take something practical instead, but we had the American
public on our side and, more importantly, the media. "Of what worth are we to Christianity," a leading
commentator demanded, "if we deny to these stalwart colonists, who are going to be present at the first
Christmas, the sacred scene which commemorates it?"
When Joe Holtz turns on the tree lights, the tree explodes into multicolored magnificence. The