Boston wears a different cloak at Christmas. Not new, certainly, for if ever New Boston is forgotten, it is now, but different somehow. The Maiden Aunt of American Cities takes out her warm old familiar garment, primps her grey hair, and marches defiantly into the cold. She tramps down from Beacon Hill, shops in one of the gaudy New Boston stores and many of the old smaller ones, then just as quietly slips back through the park, leaving cries of crass commercialism to others. So familiar is her path, so unobtrusive, that you may not have noticed her. Your Christmas in Boston may consist entirely of fighting crowds at Jordan's to pick up that Christmas gift for the roommate who turned out to be not so bad after all.

But the grande dame is there, and to have missed her would be to miss one of Boston's most charming moods. It's an anachronism that somehow works, a reversion that is delightful rather than reactionary. It is perhaps the only mood in which the Dickensian Charles Basin skyline is more impressive than the tall, sterile Prudential. That Dickens touch is, actually, the keynote to Boston's Christmas. Inexplicably one expects to hear "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" instead of "Jingle Bells."

Boston is too much an American city to escape commercialized Christmas entirely. It showed no restraint in rushing the season--Jordan's and Filene's both had their windows and lights ready almost two weeks before Thanksgiving--the shopping crowds are no more courteous than in any other city, and the unavoidable traffic jams have elicited no examples of Christmas spirit from the participants. But somehow the city keeps her head. She looks with grudging admiration at Prudential Center, like the split level of a nouveau riche nephew, but stays home for the holidays. The stark slab may mean money and progress and all those other nasty things, but the important thing now is the old house, the Christmas wreaths looking dignified on Louisburg Square, the candles at the State House.

She can wear her traditional cloak because she is so well designed for it. Her old crooked streets, streets which cry out for little specialty shops and snug restaurants, leave the high-rise mobile visionaries agog. She still can't understand how they accomplished Pru, much less Government Center. Whereas nearly every other major city has a main thoroughfare, a center, which it can color and jam and point to, Boston has a small area of delicate trees and historical graves. There is never any question in a visitor's mind as to where the heart of Boston is. Bawdy Washington Street and arty Newbury are mere auxiliaries. He returns to the Hill, to the Common. Tremont Street, he says, that must be it. But no, there just doesn't seem to be a main street. Aside from the few movie house and stores on one side only, the heart of this city seems bordered by a white-steepled church, a charming silversmith shop, and rows of stately bay-windowed townhouses. Why it's--and then he realizes that he is standing at the heart of the biggest small town in America. No matter what the brochures say about the New Boston, he knows this small town atmosphere instinctively and likes it.

The Harvard student now is busy finishing term papers, buying unexpected gifts, and making travel arrangements. Ever since be discovered Santa was a fake, he's been verbally conscious of the things which are wrong with Christmas. It seems a crystallization of all the things he considers "sick in our society"--he won't even admit that he still likes to see "A Christmas Carol" performed on TV or that those same damn carols do get to him now and them. But the Maiden Aunt knows, for beneath her dignity and austerity she is an incurable romantic. After all, those wreaths still do appear on colonial brass knockers.

And so she goes her way heedless, decorating her arboreal center in bright lights of soft colors, draping venerable trees with blues and greens. She even puts some change in the Salvation Army pot as she trundles back from Jordan's or Bonwit's. You may feel peculiarly "out" as you watch her, for holidays are not times for strangers. But she is not to be missed--none of the magic of New York, mind you, or even the plasticity of Los Angeles, but still something quite remarkable in her own way. How long can it last, you ask yourself? How long before Washington Street takes over? But the Maiden Aunt smiles confidently. She's been around a long time.