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I enjoyed reading these 100+ year old Christmas stories very much but some are brutal. Many people die, most people are unfathomably poor. If you want a glimpse of life in the 1850s, this is an excellent place to start.

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These Christmas stories from the 1850s are just brutal. Here‘s another. Juan is a young blind man who has no one to care for or even save him from the cold Madrid streets. His father died and his rich brother lives across the ocean. His brother comes to Madrid and finds and saves him on Christmas Day but like many of these stories, things are not what they seem.

This is my least favorite of Louisa May Alcott‘s Christmas stories I‘ve read. Effie is a spoiled rich girl who believes poor girls are happier than she is at Christmas, when everything is so predictable. So her mother makes her a Christmas fairy who gives from her trove of toys & money to orphan girls. I appreciate that the girl is happy for giving, but I dislike how the mother is really the one who gives but makes her daughter the “savior.”

Two star-crossed lovers defy their families. They meet in the forest every night. But on Christmas the young man falls and breaks his leg and injures his arm badly in a winter storm. Solange stays with him to fend off the wolves. They nearly die from the frozen temperatures and the gathering wolves. Ultimately saved, they are finally allowed to marry and live happily ever after.

At long last, after a lot of tragic stories in this collection, Louisa May Alcott gives us a heartwarming Christmas story. Older sister Kitty is determined that her poor family have a decent Christmas dinner and with her two younger brothers, they work their hearts out to have enough money to buy food for their dinner. A lovely surprise awaits them. This is another beautiful Alcott story.

A young boy (the poor ragamuffin) Pacorrito falls in love with a doll in a shopkeeper‘s window. When the doll is bought by a wealthy family, Pacoritto manages to get a job in the house. When he finds her broken and torn he “saves” her. He finds out she‘s royalty among dolls and she gives him a choice: to become a doll, too, and “live” forever or lose her. Let‘s just say his love causes him to make a very poor choice.

Ah, Dickens. What a horrific Christmas story, but unfortunately as the last years have proven all too true. The Bigwigs fight and fret and try to manage everyone‘s lives while the plague kills the population. Why did he think this was an appropriate Christmas story?

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More from the prescient Nobody‘s Story by Charles Dickens about the Bigwigs‘ managing to do little to rid the country of the plague.

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Charles Dickens wrote Nobody‘s Story in 1853 and it couldn‘t be more like the year 2021 if we tried. The “BigWigs” are all fighting amongst themselves about what to teach the kids, and how to run things, while a plague is wiping out the poor. I learned a most important fact from this book—that times repeat themselves and we never learn.

Travelers into the woods become stuck there due to a fast-arriving blizzard but they are treated kindly to share Christmas stew with some woodsmen who are waiting near a cabin. Inside is one of the woodsmen‘s wives, who delivers a baby boy. The story is clearly reminiscent of e birth of Jesus.

A kind teacher is bullied to no end by the boys in a boys school, but the kind teacher remains forever kind. The story is told my one schoolboy about how the boys finally come around.

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Two brothers make a deal with a cuckoo bird they saved on Christmas, who promises to deliver them either a gift of a gold leaf or a leaf that promises happiness but no wealth every year at Christmas. One brother chooses one and the other brother chooses the other and you can imagine who ends up having made the better choice.

This story, like the last, has no mention of Christmas but here it is in a Christmas collection. This story is about the passage of time and growing older. I think the moral is not to fear old age or dying because all those you have loved, including those you‘ve lost, will be with you at the end.

I‘m not really sure why this story is in a Christmas collection. I must‘ve missed the reference. And it‘s been my least favorite of the stories so far due to anti-Semitic references (I do think it‘s a very old story), otherwise it wouldn‘t have been bad. A poor knight trades his valuable sword for an empty wallet, hoping it contained a fortune. But he trusted the giver anyway, which led to a very good ending for him.

Working my way through this collection and just finished this Dickens‘ story. A “poor relation” tells of his life at Christmastime, and one thinks he‘s truly poor, then he‘s not, then is he?

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This short story relates how Bishop Boniface introduced the Christmas story to heathens in Europe in the decade of the 720s, who turned from sacrificing their fairest child to Thor to worshiping Jesus and making the fir tree His symbol. There is no indication who wrote this story or when but it feels very old.

This is the first short story in the tagged book. Widow Polly Pepper is barely able to keep food on the table much less celebrate Christmas. But she makes Christmas special for her children by sharing a story about what Christmas is like for an imaginary family.

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Starting this one tonight.

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