Christmas on Jane Street: A True Story » (Tenth Anniversary Edition)

Billy Romp, his wife, and their three children live in rural Salisbury, Vermont—when they're not spreading Christmas cheer in Manhattan.

Every holiday season for ten years, Billy Romp, his wife, and their three young children have spent nearly a month living in a tiny camper and selling Christmas trees on Jane Street in New York City. They arrive from Vermont the day after Thanksgiving and leave just in time to make it home for Christmas morning -- and for a few weeks they transform a corner of the Big Apple into a small town that might be the setting for a classic Capra film.

One neighbor strings a power line from his basement to their festively decorated van; another provides them with a phone line; still others drop off spare keys to nearby apartments so they'll have a place to take a hot shower. The local meter maid "forgets" to ticket them for parking violations; Broadway producers turn up with theater tickets, and the Romps return the city's generosity by giving trees and wreaths to homes in need. It's a unique and inspiring story -- and this lovely, lovingly illustrated little gem of a book is a wonderful celebration of one family and the warm, wide circle of friends who have created a Christmas tradition all their own.

Publishers Weekly

Romantics will relish, but cynics will dismiss, this unabashedly sentimental memoir from Romp, writing with Urbanska (Moving to a Small Town). Every Thanksgiving for the past 10 years, Romp, who owns a tree farm in Vermont, has come to Manhattan with his wife, Patti, and their three children to sell Christmas trees. They operate a stand on the corner of Jane Street and Eighth Avenue in Greenwich Village and live in a tiny camper parked nearby, in which Patti produces delicious home-cooked meals. Romp's friendly manner and philosophy of matching the tree to the customer endear his family, known as "the Tree People," to the Village community. Not only do neighbors, who eagerly await their arrival, offer the family the use of their apartments for showers, but storekeepers provide free food and coffee. The Romps' ideal family life is threatened, however, when daughter Ellie, on the verge of adolescence, asks to attend a performance of The Nutcracker with her girlfriend as a Christmas gift. Romp considers such an activity extravagant and can't comprehend why his tomboy daughter and chief assistant would want to do such a thing. After some gentle nudging from Patti, Romp realizes that young Ellie just needs to try her wings, and all is well again just in time for Christmas. Readers needn't be ashamed to find this charming, but those who don't aren't grinches. Color illustrations throughout. Agent, Sterling Lord. First serial to Ladies' Home Journal. (Nov.)