The Blog

One of my favorite ways to celebrate Christmas is to lose myself in a great Christmas short story. No later than December 15 each year, I set aside whatever I’m currently reading and turn all my reading time over to Christmas. Usually new stories have come on the scene, and I try to get copies if I can, but inevitably some time before Christmas Day I allow myself the guilty pleasure of re-reading for the umpteenth time The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

If you’ve never experienced the joy of this story by Barbara Robinson, run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and buy a copy right now. True, the story has been adapted into a movie and a stage play, but these are not as good as the original story. No other medium can capture the delight of viewing the Herdmans (“absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world”) from the young narrator’s point of view. Her droll descriptions make the Herdmans’ participation in the church Christmas pageant laugh-out-loud funny and touchingly poignant at the same time. The Herdmans have never heard the nativity story before, and their interpretations of the familiar events give the narrator and the reader a fresh way of looking at the meaning of Christmas.

I was a young adult when The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was published, but my second favorite Christmas story was introduced to me when I was a child. I have fond memories of the blue and gold cover on my parents’ copy of Why the Chimes Rang by Raymond Macdonald Alden, first published in 1906. This story tells the saga of two young brothers who set out in a snow storm on Christmas Eve to attend the service at a magnificent church. According to legend, the church has a beautiful chime of bells in its tall tower that ring only when the greatest and best gift is laid on the altar for the Christ child on Christmas Eve. But as long as anyone can remember, no gift has been great enough to start them ringing.

When the brothers have nearly reached the church, they find an old woman who has fallen in the snow, too sick and tired to get to where someone could take care of her. The older brother knows he must stay with her until his little brother can bring back help, but he asks the boy to see the magnificent church for him and slip his little piece of silver on the altar when no one is looking. You can guess the ending, but the writing is so tender and so touching that the meaning still resonates.

A few years ago I found a nice surprise wrapped up in a book of Christmas short stories by Maeve Binchy. This Year It Will Be Different and Other Stories is exactly what the title says—different. I expected the stories to be happy, given that they were holiday stories, but no, they had no air of forced Christmas joviality. They were real, and in real life, holidays aren’t always happy. The title story is a good example. The main character is a wife and mother who has the responsibility of doing all the Christmas decorating, shopping, and cooking for her family every year. Then one year she decides she won’t do it. At the last minute, her family, distressed that no preparations for Christmas have been made, acknowledge that they haven’t been much help in the past and promise that this year will be different. They ask her to give them time at home alone to prepare their gift, but the gift is not what she expects, and her response is not what they expect.

To top off my list of favorites, I have to include O Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” Like Why the Chimes Rang, its simple message is the true spirit of Christmas.

Do you have any favorite Christmas short stories or novels? I’d love some new ideas.