Gordon Cotton, left, pushes an 18-foot Christmas tree up a flight of stairs at the Old Court House Museum Friday while Jeff Richardson, Jeff Giambrone and Hobbs Freeman try to lift it over the railing. The group set up the tree, which Ted and Emily Long donated to the museum, in the second floor court room. Cotton, curator and director of the Old Court House Museum/Eva W. Davis Memorial, said the first person in Mississippi ever to have set up a Christmas tree was Mahala Roach, who had a home on Depot Street. Roach’s tree, which went up in 1851, was probably a table-top tree, Cotton said. (The Vicksburg Post/PAT SHANNAHAN)