Ririro.com - Short Stories

"A College Santa Claus" drops readers into a snowy Cambridge Christmas Eve with Satherwaite, a wealthy, socially comfortable college student stranded alone after a last-minute telegram cancels his holiday plans. Sulking through an empty campus, he tracks down a classmate to return a borrowed notebook and finds himself on the edge of a warm, shabby little Christmas party he has no right to join. Wh...

"Christmas Eve in War Times" follows Mrs. Anson Marlow, a soldier's wife facing eviction, hunger, and crushing uncertainty after her husband is listed as missing in battle. Alone with her two young children on Christmas Eve, she scrapes together a few cake crumbs to fill their stockings while hiding her despair behind a fragile smile. Unbeknownst to her, her wounded husband has survived and made h...

"Betty's Bright Idea" is a Christmas short story set in New York on Christmas Eve, 1875, tracing three lives brought together by a single act of generosity. Florence, a wealthy young woman bored by gift-giving, is nudged by her maid Betty toward a struggling family: John Morley, a gardener dismissed for drinking, and his wife, quietly weeping over an empty cupboard and unpaid rent. As despair and...

"The Christmas Ghost" follows Jane White, a solitary New England woman hardened by years of isolation and an old romantic betrayal, who wakes to find her fire lit and breakfast prepared by an unseen visitor on Christmas Eve. Struck down by rheumatism in a winter storm and cut off from neighbors she has long despised, Jane faces both helplessness and a creeping supernatural dread — until the identi...

"The Torn Cloak" follows Jacques, a barefoot boy who attends midnight Mass on a bitter Christmas Eve while his widowed mother lies ill at home with no firewood. Braving a blizzard to gather wood, Jacques encounters a frost-covered crucifix at the Trèves crossroads and, moved by its expression of suffering, wraps his dead father's torn cloak around the stone figure. The gesture costs him everything...

"The Christmas Festival of Flowers" draws readers into the moorland world of Paul Corolla, a mysterious flower trader on the edge of Dartmoor whose reputation for magic draws the desperate and heartbroken to his door. When a despairing young man named Philip Tremenheere arrives one evening, Paul quietly sets in motion a plan that will untangle not only Philip's ruined romance with Alice Cranstone...

"Black-and-All-Black: A Legend of the Padereen Mare" is an Irish tall tale narrated by the lovably unreliable Paddy Phats on Christmas Eve. At its heart is a diabolical horse race: the coal-black stallion owned by the Devil faces the mysterious milk-white Padereen Mare championed by a wily priest. Behind the thundering hooves lies the wager of a corrupt squire's soul — a man who sold himself to Sa...

"The Fairy Tale of Fairy Tales" opens in a mythic age when the Spirit-King Tien divides his four kingdoms among his daughters: Thalatta of the sea, Ætheria of the sky, Fiamma of fire, and gentle Hertha of the earth. Into this world steps Andrea, son of an Indian enchanter, armed with a magic mirror and a mantle, tasked with finding a bride among the elemental queens. His encounters with the proud...

"A Christmas Tale" follows Antony, an eight-year-old orphan who stumbles through a snowbound forest on Christmas Eve and discovers a warm family gathered around a Nativity scene. Taken in by the kind gamekeeper Grünewald, Antony grows into a gifted painter whose journey to Italy transforms his life — yet the debt of love he carries never fades. When the family faces ruin through a vindictive offic...

"A Christmas in the Forest" by André Theuriet opens on a bitterly frozen Christmas Eve as two friends venture through an ice-lacquered forest to visit a woodworkers' camp. Caught by sudden heavy snowfall, they share a humble supper of hare stew and rough wine around a fire, while the camp's master anxiously awaits a doctor for his ailing wife. The night deepens, distant church bells layer across t...

"A Christmas Eve in Exile" drops the reader into a Bavarian military hospital on Christmas Eve 1870, where two wounded French infantrymen — Salvette and the gravely ill Bernadou — long for the Provençal traditions of home. Salvette secretly sacrifices their last money, meant for the journey home, to buy wine and a Christmas loaf. As midnight bells toll over a silent ward of suffering men, he sings...

Joseph Golding's Last Christmas follows a wealthy, solitary old man who spends Christmas Eve confronting a lifetime of emotional coldness — toward a wife he neglected, a daughter he drove away, and a family he never allowed himself to have. When a small golden-haired girl appears at his door bearing a letter from his estranged daughter Amy, the encounter cracks open a heart hardened by decades of...

"Santa Claus Family" unfolds across three interlocking Christmas narratives that together span twenty years. A lonely seven-year-old boy named Tommy receives an unexpected visit from a young woman dressed as Santa Claus, and vows he will only marry someone exactly like her. Told first through Tommy's grown-up reminiscence, then through the woman's own memory, and finally through a letter from her...

"A Christmas Eve in Spain" captures a rural Spanish family's Christmas Eve through precise, affectionate detail: two boys sneaking fingers into milk jars, a seminarian fleeing a pedantic neighbor who ambushes him with Latin phrases, and a household buzzing with fritters, honey, and wine. When the marzantes — young men clattering wooden clogs and imitating horses — arrive at the door to sing a Chri...

"A Christmas Letter" by Stephen Leacock is a satirical short story told as a formal letter of refusal from a pompous adult declining an invitation to a children's Christmas party. With mounting comic indignation, the narrator explains why he cannot submit to blindfold games involving hobby-horse-wielding ten-year-olds, crawl on all fours pretending to be a bear, or suffer the maiden aunt's guessin...

A Snow-Bound Christmas brings together a mismatched group of train passengers stranded in a snowdrift on Christmas Eve. Among them: a grieving fireman with a five-year-old boy who desperately wants the Christmas his late mother promised him, a quick-thinking young woman named Miss Marsh, a sullen runaway boy, an elderly grandmother, and a weary surgeon. As the storm holds them captive through the...

"The Christmas Inn" unfolds on a snow-swept Christmas Eve in 1465, when a wartime truce brings two rival convoys — Lancastrian and Yorkist soldiers — sheltering at the same English inn. Among the armed men arrives tiny Lady Margery Vere, a golden-haired toddler of two and a half, followed by Barbara and Janet Barnstaples, solemn twin girls from the enemy faction. When Margery spots the twins and c...

Molly Ryan's Christmas Eve follows a small Irish girl travelling in steerage aboard the steamship Astoria on a stormy Christmas Eve crossing the Atlantic. Leaning over the rail to glimpse what she imagines is a Christmas tree in the churning black water — she has never owned one — Molly tumbles into the sea during a collision. Rescued by the rough crew of a sailing bark, she wakes in a grim foreca...

"A Race with an Avalanche" puts the Ward family's Christmas in jeopardy when relentless snowfall cuts off their Rocky Mountain town from supplies and mail. When Dr. Ward answers an urgent call to treat a badly injured miner — despite real avalanche danger — his daughter Kate is left behind, consumed by fear and grief. Then her brother Harry makes a desperate ski run down a mountain slope with a ro...

"A Recruit at Christmas" follows Lieutenant Claflin, a young naval officer manning a Bowery recruiting station on Christmas Eve, as a disheveled young man arrives to enlist. Claflin sees past the paperwork to a man at a crossroads — not a natural soldier, but someone caught between self-destruction and the chance to go home. In a quiet act that bends every regulation, he speaks honestly about what...

"One Old Lady's Christmas" follows Madam Angell, an elderly woman who has lost nearly everything — her wealth, her home, her family — yet holds fast to a contented spirit. When December arrives and she watches poor children press their cold noses against a shop window, she refuses her own helplessness. Armed with only red yarn and knitting needles, she quietly creates crimson mittens, hiding peppe...

"The Stage Coach" by Washington Irving captures a Christmas Eve coach ride through Yorkshire, brimming with seasonal warmth and keen observation. Three exuberant schoolboys bubble with anticipation for reuniting with family, sisters, and their beloved pony Bantam. Irving sketches the lordly English coachman, the festive stir of village life, and the glow of a welcoming inn — until a chance meeting...

"Christmas on Wheels" finds reluctant traveler Bob Estabrook stranded on a snowbound train crossing the winter plains on Christmas Eve — far from the holiday parties he'd been forced to abandon. When a blizzard halts the locomotive and fuel runs out, it's the quietly capable Miss Gertrude Raymond who rallies the passengers to act. Bob trudges through the drifts for firewood, discovers Gertrude car...

"Cold Out of Doors, and Cold In-Doors" follows Tom Smithers, a young law student who finds himself penniless and uninvited on Christmas Day. Desperate for company and a meal, he boldly turns up at the grand Tipton household — only to discover that wealth and family obligation can produce a chill far worse than any winter street. The story contrasts two kinds of Christmas gathering with sharp wit,...

"My First Christmas in England" follows a Scottish narrator experiencing his first English Christmas as a stranger in a northern town where he knows almost no one. Raised in Scotland, where New Year's outshines Christmas entirely, he watches the city transform with festive preparation — only to find himself profoundly alone on the day itself. Empty streets, distant friends, and the sound of other...