Five classic Christmas stories
Christmas is a time of family traditions, and Christmas stories are a big part of the holiday traditions. Today, you’ll hear about five classic Christmas stories. One thing they all have in common is that they have universal themes and they can be enjoyed by kids and adults. This is not a ranking, not a top five, not an exhaustive list, but we will talk about five classic Christmas stories. They are: The Snowman, The Polar Express, The Legend of the Poinsettia, A Christmas Carol, and How the Grinch Stole Chirstmas!.
The Snowman
The first story we’ll talk about today is The Snowman by the British illustrator Raymond Briggs. It came out in 1978. The Snowman is a picture book: there are no words, just illustrations. A small boy, James, builds a snowman in his yard. The snowman comes to life, and they have great experiences together. They explore the boy’s house, and they fly over the countryside at night.
But in the morning, after James wakes up, the snowman has melted. Their special friendship lasted just the one day.
When I put it that way, the story sounds sad. But Briggs said it wasn’t meant to be sad, just realistic. And because the book has no words, readers are free to interpret it in their own way. It’s a great Christmas story because it captures the idea of childhood wonder and imagination. It also shows that some connections can be special, even if they’re fleeting.
The Polar Express
Our next story is The Polar Express by the American author Chris Van Allsburg. It came out in 1985. The Polar Express is a short story—just 32 pages—but it’s a beautiful book. And the form is important: it’s unusually wide, with a hard cover and high-quality paper. On the inside, the full-color, detailed illustrations take up almost the full width of the double page. A slim bar of white on the left or the right has the text.
The story is about a boy who lies awake in his bed on Christmas Eve. He hears the sound of a steam engine and looks out his window: a train is waiting and the conductor invites him to get on. On board, he joins dozens of other children in their pajamas. The train sets off for the North Pole.
When the train arrives at the North Pole, Santa says he will choose one child to receive the first gift of Christmas that year. He picks the boy, the narrator. Santa asks what he’d like for his first present, and he says he’d like a bell from Santa’s sleigh.
Santa leaves him a note, and says that only true believers can hear the bell ring. When, back home, the boy shakes the bell on Christmas morning, he and his sister can hear its beautiful sound: they are true believers. But his parents can’t hear it: they say, it’s too bad the bell is broken.
The last words of the book go like this: “At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them….Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”
The Legend of the Poinsettia
The next story we’ll talk about is called The Legend of the Poinsettia.
The Legend of the Poinsettia is a traditional Mexican folktale, best known in English through a retelling by American author and illustrator Tomie dePaola.
In the story, a poor girl named Lucida wants to bring a gift to present to the Christ Child at Christmas Eve mass. But she’s sad because she has nothing to give. Her cousin consoles her. He says that even the most humble gift, if given in love, would be welcomed. So she gathers some weeds from the neighborhood and lays the bouquet at the foot of the altar.
After she does so, the weeds bloom into beautiful red flowers, called the flowers of the Holy Night. Everyone present believes they have witnessed a miracle.
The story is touching because it emphasizes that any gift is special, no matter how humble, no matter the circumstances of the giver.
A Christmas Carol
Next up, A Christmas Carol is a short novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published as a single volume on December 19, 1843. This is the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge. On Christmas Eve, he is visited by three ghosts: the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. And they reflect his life back to him: how was he in the past, how is he now, and how might he be in the future?
In the story, he transforms from a selfish miser into a generous, warm-hearted man. So much of what Dickens wrote was a reaction to the harsh life and inequalities in Victorian England. Dickens wrote this quickly and it was published in the weeks before Christmas.
In the early 1800s, Christmas celebrations were low-key and the holiday was not the family-oriented holiday that we celebrate today. But A Christmas Carol was an important part of the transformation of the holiday in Britain and Europe. It framed Christmas as a time of family gatherings, generosity, empathy, and moral reflection.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
And the last story we’ll talk about today is, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! This is a children’s book by the American author Dr. Seuss and it was published in 1957.
The Grinch is a grumpy green creature who tries to steal Christmas by taking away every material thing related to Christmas: the presents, the decorations, even the food. He took it all away from the town of Whoville. But the Whos—the people living in Whoville—they decide to celebrate anyway. They gather together and sing, proving that Christmas isn’t really about material things.
The Grinch, looking on, is shocked, and he has a change of heart. His heart grows and he begins to understand the true meaning of the holiday.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is one of the most widely-read Christmas stories in the United States and around the world.
Jeff’s take
Interestingly, both the Grinch and Scrooge are shorthand for grumpy people who ruin Christmas—the Grinch—and greedy misers—Scrooge. But in both cases, the characters come around in the story. Scrooge, by the end of A Christmas Carol is no longer greedy. And the Grinch is good in the end. So I think those two characters get a bit of a bad reputation.
A couple other notes for you.
The poinsettia is a flower native to southern Mexico, and it naturally turns a bright red in December. You see them everywhere here in Mexico at Christmastime. Long before the story, The Legend of the Poinsettia, and long before Christianity reached the new world, the poinsettia flower was associated with winter ceremonies, dating back to the Aztecs.
It’s only called a poinsettia because an American ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, brought it to the United States and introduced it as a Christmas symbol. It had been known—as it is still known—in Spanish as “the flower of the Holy Night”, or of Christmas eve. The Aztecs had a different name for it in their language. But in English, it’s called a poinsettia, after the ambassador who brought it to the English-speaking world.
And a personal note as we close this story: my favorite Christmas book is The Polar Express. I read it every year as a kid; it never got old. To this day, I remember the cover, the illustrations, and how I felt reading the story every year.
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