THIS is the season of lists. Shopping lists, Christmas card lists, guest lists; the annual cycle of anticipation, frustration, desperation and finally gratification, is at hand. TIME celebrates the season with a cover story on the hazards and pleasures of Christmas shopping. Sprinkled throughout are details about what costs most, sells best, or is furthest out, and among these samplings readers may even find a last-minute clue as to what to give a difficult name on their list. But just in case, we have in recent weeks been compiling other lists too. Last week TIME printed four columns of recommendations among gift books, the kind "that deserve to be read (or looked at), not just given." This week's book section contains a somewhat caustic roundup of recent children's books. Our survey of children's records in the Dec. 1 issue was more cheerful: it found and recommended "more than a few moments of genuine magic on microgroove."

THE habit of list making at this season is also a favorite pastime in sport. The A.P., the U.P.I., and a host of others compile football All-Americas. Some years ago, determined not to add just one more list to the confusion, TIME devised another kind of All-America. We went around to the professional scouts, who on sunny or wintry Saturdays put a cold, calm eye on college football teams, looking for players they are prepared to invest in. TIME's pro-picked All-America ran in our Dec. 1 issue. Last week the professionals of the National and American Football leagues made their drafts. Except for one end and one guard, every graduating senior on our list was picked by some pro team on the first round. The end made it on the second round, the guard on the fourth. (It turns out that pros generally consider college guards too small, choose them late in the draft.) To the fine athletes on our list, all now spoken for, our congratulations.

THE highest Christmas tree in New York, a 64-ft. metal "tree of lights," shines atop the TIME & LIFE Building. It weighs more than a ton, lights up with more than 2,000 bulbs, and is firmly braced against winter's worst. Down below, in TIME INC.'s Exhibit Center, those of our friends within range of the island of Manhattan will find an island of traffic-free calm and beauty during the Christmas rush. Illuminated color transparencies of 25 Renaissance masterpieces in full size tell the Christmas story with remarkable fidelity. There are reproductions of paintings and frescoes by such masters as El Greco, Botticelli, Van Eyck, Gozzoli, Giorgione and Bellini. Among them is Raphael's Alba Madonna, shown here. TIME readers may remember seeing it in color in our Nov. 24 issue, for when Andrew Mellon paid the Russians $1,166,400 for it back in 1931, it was the largest sum ever paid for a painting until Rembrandt's Aristotle (on TIME's cover that issue) went to the Metropolitan Museum for $2,300,000.

The illuminations will be on display until Jan. 7, and everyone is invited to come see them.

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