What is the mood throughout the short story of "A Christmas Memory"?

Mood, or the emotional effect that a text has, remains
pretty much constant throughout this excellent reminiscence until the end, when the
flashback to the narrator's childhood ends and we are thrust into the present and forced
to see the impact of time on us all.

It is clear that the
prevailing mood of this excellent tale is one of nostalgia - we are thrust back into an
old-fashioned country Christmas from the very first
paragraph:

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Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of
winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house
in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big
round tabel and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today
the fireplace commenced its seasonal
roar.

Note how the details of
the fireplace that has just been lit and the coming of winter create an atmosphere of
Christmas with all the accompanying excitement and delight. This is a nostalgic mood
that continues as we look back to how Christmas was and join in the struggle of baking
and posting all of the cakes with the narrator and his
friend.

However, from the one-sentence paragraph, "This is
our last Christmas together", it is clear that life moves on and that time makes such
poignant activity, just a "Christmas Memory" and even results in the death of
Queenie:

A
message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received,
severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting in loose like a kite on a
broken string.

It appears
that time separates us from both our past and from those that we love best. It is this
shift that moves the mood from one of nostalgia to one of sadness and sombreness as we
recognise the dominion that time has over us as well.