What's your favorite Christmas story? You can beat some of the old English masterpieces and who can forget The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen? But I am a fan of the short stories of American author O Henry.
O Henry's timeless story The Gift of the Magi tells of a young married couple on their first Christmas who are short on money but long on love for one another. The sacirifice they both make for the other makes you root for love all over again.
What's your favorite?
Favorite Christmas Story
Moderators: DJKeefy, 4u Network
Favorite Christmas Story
"A man who has had a bull by the tail once has learned 60 or 70 times as much as a man who hasn't."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
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HEPZIBAH
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[face=Comic Sans MS]I suppose for me it has to be The Christmas Story, where it all began in Betheleham around 2000 years ago and without which there would be no Christmas.
I enjoyed A Christmas Caro by Charles Dickens but haven't read it completely and so have relied very much on the various films to 'fill in the gaps'.
There is a book by David Kosov called 'The Book of Witnesses' which tells stories about events in Christs life but from the perspective of people, and animals that would have been around at the time. I am reminded of one as told by the donkey. I think it's time I re-read that too.
So many 'Christmas' stories are a bit too corney and schmultzy for my taste and often lose any sense of reality and normality![/face]
I enjoyed A Christmas Caro by Charles Dickens but haven't read it completely and so have relied very much on the various films to 'fill in the gaps'.
There is a book by David Kosov called 'The Book of Witnesses' which tells stories about events in Christs life but from the perspective of people, and animals that would have been around at the time. I am reminded of one as told by the donkey. I think it's time I re-read that too.
So many 'Christmas' stories are a bit too corney and schmultzy for my taste and often lose any sense of reality and normality![/face]
Experience is not what happens to you;
it is what you do with what happens to you.
-Aldous Huxley
Love ALL the Hans christian Anderson stories - especially "the snow queen" also oscar wildes stories, but favourite is "A christmas carol" by Charles Dickens ....wonderful and evokes so many descriptive christmas memories. I love the dinner........
"There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!
But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been, flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glasses. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all."
"There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!
But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been, flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glasses. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all."
Just remembered a recent children's book that has become extremely popular -- The Polar Express. There is an animated movie about it also. Not one of my favorites but others love it. About a troubled boy who boards a magical train heading for the North Pole.
"A man who has had a bull by the tail once has learned 60 or 70 times as much as a man who hasn't."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
-
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