đź•Ż Christmas in New York, 1950s
The story behind the scent
It was mid-December, and snow had begun to blanket the streets of New York in soft white. In a quiet Brooklyn brownstone lived Margaret—a young woman in her early twenties, studying fine art at Columbia and working part-time at a vintage bookstore. She loved everything nostalgic: old books, jazz vinyl, handwritten letters… and winter.
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This year was her first Christmas spent alone. Her parents had moved down south, and though the city buzzed with lights and cheer, something still felt missing.
On the evening of December 23rd, 1954, Margaret came home from work, her coat dusted in snowflakes. As she reached her building, she paused on the first step when she heard someone playing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on a piano nearby. The melody warmed her chest.
She climbed the stairs slowly and entered her apartment. As always, she lit a small candle her grandmother had sent—warm and spicy with a scent like cinnamon, snow, and memory. It was the only light in the room.
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She sat by the window. Outside, the snow fell steadily beneath the glow of a streetlamp. The world felt paused. And then—just for a second—she thought she saw something beyond the clouds: a silhouette of a sleigh soaring past the moon, reindeer leading the way. Was it real? She didn’t know. But she let herself believe.
A knock at the door. She opened it to find Arthur, her neighbor from the floor below. A quiet illustrator who worked for a local paper. He held out a small box wrapped in red ribbon.
“I was going to drop this in your mailbox,” he said softly. “But something told me you should get it in person.”
Inside was a hand-drawn sketch: her window, her silhouette, the snow, the same glowing lamplight… and the sleigh in the sky.
“You saw that too?” she asked.
He smiled.
“Not sure. But it felt like something you’d want to believe in.”
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