As I began musing over possible candidates for a list of Top Ten Christmas Stories, a strange thing happened. Five came to mind immediately, without research, thumbing through old books, or anything.
Five came to mind, and were somewhat of a surprise in some cases, and I quickly realized that these five just had to be the most deserving. Here, then, is my own little list of the Five Best Christmas Stories. No Truman Capote or Dylan Thomas, though both are quite deserving -- it's a little eclectic, and runs from a piece that barely fills two pages to a piece that is more properly considered a short novel. Here they are.
We begin with the one more properly considered a short novel. Dickens was a great lover of the Ghost Story, and some years after the publication of this little tale, which made his reputation, he was was editing various magazines on a regular basis, and was careful to ensure the inclusion of a couple of ghostly tales in every Christmas edition. It may thus be said that the late Victorian custom of ghost stories for Christmas Eve was tremendously furthered, if not fathered, by Charles Dickens.
This one, of course, is the Christmas tale of all tales. It is to this day impossible to imagine the season without taking in some manifestation of the story. Scrooge is, after all, all of us, every time we curse the crowds, the traffic, every time indeed we fail to realize that love for one's fellow man is arguably our most important task in our fleeting lives, every time we descend to such baseness we would be well served by a Spirit or two of our own. It is extraordinary that the tale plays as well today as it did 156 years ago!
| A Hint for Next Christmas |
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This one is extremely short, barely two pages. Nonetheless it is delightful, and quite funny. (And yes, this is the very same author of the Pooh books!)
| Crisp New Bills for Mr. Teagle |
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Another humor bit -- this one originally from The New Yorker. It's a comic piece, with an original twist to this season of tipping and calculating. I once thought it would have made an uncommonly good Twilight Zone episode, and was thus happily surprised to learn that it had shown up in a recent issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
Oh, did I mention that when Great Grandma took Grandma to Babes in Toyland, it was probably in Iowa? At any rate, this is a quiet little piece -- nothing more than a memory of a simpler, home made time. As you know, there are thousands of such pieces, particularly when Christmas is involved. I first read this over thirty years ago, and have never been able to get it out of my mind. In short, as extraordinary an evocation of American Christmases of Old as you'll ever find.
| Stubby Pringle's Christmas |
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Schaefer wrote Shane among other things, so as you might expect this tale has a Western setting. Christmas Carol is, of course, well known to you, the next two selections are humorous pieces, designed to put the heyday of the season into perspective, and the immediately preceding Iowa Christmas is not fiction at all, but a simple memory, much as I've just subjected you to in this column.
I end, I think, very appropriately, with this little Christmas tale about a lone cowboy, the promise of a barn dance, and a lonely cabin out in the middle of nowhere. No carolers for miles, no Victorians, no holly or any of that, and yet if I were ever forced to pick one short story that embodied the essence of Christmas, I should choose this one.
All these tales have found their way into more than one Christmas collection. Any of these tales will do you good.
Merry Christmas!
