A Treasury of Christmas Stories and Songs

Book excerpt: Enchanting, tragic, and hilarious fairy tales for adults and children grace these pages. An initial glance might lead you to assume that these are satirical versions of classic Christmas ghost stories. However, beneath the humorous stories involving ghosts, repentant sinners, miracles, and good peasants who find well-deserved happiness, lies a psychological undercurrent that sharpens the sense of intrigue and plot movement. Often this is aided by the unrelenting social exposure of the authors who always understood how intangible the “bourgeois paradise” truly was. Even today, idyllic dreams of tolerance, equality, and the triumph of justice have failed to materialize. Perhaps that is why people continue to read these classic stories while the snow falls outside and the lights glow on the Christmas tree. Contents: Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol; Gilbert Keith Chesterton - A Christmas Carol; Lucy Maud Montgomery - A Christmas Inspiration, A Christmas Mistake, Christmas at Red Butte; Lyman Frank Baum - A Kidnapped Santa Claus; Mark Twain - A Letter from Santa Claus; Louisa May Alcott - A Merry Christmas; Leo Tolstoy - A Russian Christmas Party; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Christmas Bells; Nikolai Gogol - Christmas Eve; William Dean Howells - Christmas Everyday; Joseph Rudyard Kipling - Christmas in India; Lyman Frank Baum - Little Bun Rabbit; Elizabeth Harrison - Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe; John Milton - On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity; Charles Dickens - The Chimes; Hans Christian Andersen - The Fir Tree; Selma Lagerlöf - The Holy Night; Hans Christian Andersen - The Little Match Girl; Clement Moore - The Night Before Christmas; Henry van Dyke - The Other Wise Man; William Dean Howells - The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express; Beatrix Potter - The Tailor of Gloucester; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Three Kings; Anton Chehov - Vanka.