Ririro.com - Short Stories

"The Old Man's Christmas" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox follows Anson English, a cold and fault-finding old man who drove away his son's kind first wife Edith, welcomed a harsh second daughter-in-law, and ended his days abandoned in a poorhouse. When Edith discovers his fate, she brings him home — letting him believe she is someone else entirely, so he can die in warmth and peace. The story moves between...

"A Matter of System" is a short story about Jasper Hawkins, a rigidly systematic businessman who dismisses his wife's Christmas shopping struggles and vows to handle the last three gifts himself. Armed with a neat list and supreme confidence, he sets out to buy presents for a half-sick spinster, a lame boy, and a rich, temperamental uncle — only to find that department-store chaos, forgotten detai...

"Christmas in a Dugout" places readers inside a WWI trench on Christmas Eve, where an American soldier known as Yank and his machine-gun crew — Curly, Happy, Sailor Bill, and Ikey — scrape together a Christmas feast from rum rations, fruitcake, and champagne. When a German cornet plays across No Man's Land and a Welsh voice sings back, the war's absurdity flares into brief, aching beauty. Then the...

"The Wager of Gerald O'Rourke" follows Gerald, a famously heavy-sleeping schoolboy who bets he can wake himself before dawn on Christmas morning to sing the solo at Mass and rouse his friend Maurice in time. To tip the odds, he asks the souls in purgatory for help — and promises them something in return. What Gerald doesn't know is that his father is on the verge of losing his job, and that a wron...

"A Christmas Eve in the Far South Seas" transports readers to a remote Pacific lagoon in 1880, where British, German, and American traders set aside bitter commercial rivalries to celebrate Christmas together. Narrator Tom Denison, Scotsman Donald MacBride and his Palauan wife Sera, portly Ludwig Wolfen, and the two American traders Tom Devine and Charley de Buis share haggis disasters, accordion...

"A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner" by Helen Hunt Jackson presents a Christmas menu unlike any found in a recipe book: a feast built entirely from gladness, love, hospitality, and gratitude. Written as a whimsical yet earnest "bill of fare," the piece guides readers through courses of deliberate joy and generous spirit, arguing that the finest Christmas dinner costs nothing. Jackson ins...

"Santa Claus at Simpson's Bar" is a rugged Christmas short story set in California's Gold Rush country, where rough-edged miner Dick Bullen undertakes a punishing fifty-mile midnight ride on a vicious mare named Jovita to fetch Christmas toys for Johnny — a sick, bedridden boy who has never known the holiday's magic. With his companions gone quiet and a wounded arm bleeding in the dark, Dick races...

"Getting Up a Pantomime" pulls readers backstage at a Victorian theatre as carpenters, scene-painters, property masters, and seamstresses race against time to mount "Harlequin Fee-fo-fum" before Boxing Day. From the chaotic reading of the manuscript to the frantic gilding of scenes and moulding of grotesque papier-mâché masks, the anonymous author reveals the exhausting, skilled labour hidden behi...

"Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration" follows Uncle Noah, the last faithful servant of the proud but impoverished Fairfax family, as Christmas Eve forces a desperate reckoning. With the beloved family turkey sentenced to the dinner table and the Colonel's financial ruin a closely guarded secret, Noah slips into a snowy night clutching an audacious plan — selling himself to a gray-eyed stranger at t...

Asaph Sheafe's Christmas captures the quiet ache of a generous act gone wrong — and the unseen good it sets in motion. Twelve-year-old Asaph spends every penny of his allowance on Christmas gifts, then sacrifices his time and comfort on a snowy Christmas Eve to guide a lost immigrant mother and her seven children through Boston's streets. His reward is a broken coffee-pot and a lump in his throat....

"The Patroncito's Christmas" drops readers into a rugged Sierra Nevada winter, where Cherokee Sam — hunter, gold-prospector, and bitter squatter — faces a bare Christmas after his corn patch was stripped by a wealthy landowner's men. Everything shifts when he encounters the landowner's young son waiting alone at a mountain pass on Christmas Eve, convinced Sam is San Nicolás himself. What unfolds t...

"The Perfect Reader" opens on Christmas Eve with a writer slipping a heartfelt tribute into the stocking of that rare creature: someone who reads purely for joy. The essay contrasts the tormented writer-reader — forever critiquing, comparing, yearning — with the Perfect Reader, who surrenders completely to a book, catching every allusion and communing with long-dead authors. Through a vivid portra...

"Two Christmases" unfolds during a devastating war and plague that has emptied a Franconian town of nearly all life. When a mother's toddler falls deathly still on Christmas morning, she surrounds him with candlelight and a decorated tree — only for the boy, Hans, to briefly enter Paradise before being sent back to earth. Years later, Hans grows into a restless dreamer who abandons his family and...

"The Legend of the Christmas Rose" unfolds when Abbot Hans, a gentle monk with a love of flowers, hears from a fierce outlaw woman that the wild Göinge forest transforms into a miraculous summer garden every Christmas Eve. Determined to witness the miracle—and to win freedom for her outlawed husband—he rides into the icy wilderness on Christmas Eve. What he encounters surpasses all earthly beauty,...

"The Cake Lady" by Mildred White opens in a children's hospital ward at Christmas, where young Tessie Louise refuses to stop crying until she sees her beloved Miss Nora Dean — a generous woman who bakes doll-shaped cakes for sick children and once took Tessie home to her lakeside cottage for a whole summer month. When the sharp-edged Dr. Donald Bruce drives Tessie out to the lake on Christmas Day,...

Regina's Christmas Tree begins with a young woman's quiet panic on Christmas Eve when the tree she promised her Sunday school class of twelve little girls fails to arrive. Determined and resourceful, Regina grabs an ax and heads for the small fir tree in the vacant lot next door — only to be stopped by its unexpected owner, David Langhorn, who has made the very same promise to twelve settlement bo...

"Christmas Inconsistency" is a short satirical story that follows two men shopping on Christmas Eve who encounter a small boy eager to earn ten cents — just enough to buy his mother a pink carnation. When one man tips the boy for hailing a cab, his companion lectures him about encouraging bad habits. Minutes later, the same critic slips the waiter a lavish tip to secure better service — and the co...

"Christmas Storms and Sunshine" by Elizabeth Gaskell follows two quarrelsome neighbouring couples — the Hodgsons and the Jenkinses — whose petty rivalries over politics, cats, and class collide during a bitterly cold Christmas Eve. When Mary Hodgson's baby suddenly falls dangerously ill with croup, it is the sharp-tongued Mrs Jenkins who rushes downstairs with a kettle and a mustard plaster, setti...

"A Russian Christmas Party" by Leo Tolstoy immerses readers in the restless Christmas-tide atmosphere of the Rostow estate, where financial ruin looms and young hearts ache with longing. Natacha drifts through the household tormented by her absent fiancé Prince Andre, while her brother Nicolas grows unexpectedly enchanted with the gentle, penniless Sonia. A moonlit troika race to a neighbor's hous...

Vera's Second Christmas Adventure by Arnold Bennett follows Vera Cheswardine, a witty and superstitious woman locked in a silent battle of wills with her husband Stephen over a cancelled Swiss holiday. Two days before Christmas, Stephen arrives home with an unexpected American guest — the charming Mr Bittenger from New York — whose startling resemblance to the stranger in Vera's dream unsettles he...

"The Christmas Gift That Came To Rupert" is a haunting short story in which a doctor recalls a gifted but frail boy named Rupert, who receives a drum—mysteriously and anonymously—on a Christmas night. Mocked for his sensitivity and dismissed by his practical father, Rupert begins hearing the drum beat in the night, calling to him insistently. The story follows his transformation from a bookish, si...

Vera's First Christmas Adventure finds Vera Cheswardine caught between her husband's refined taste and her own impulsive desires one December. When Stephen returns from London with antique Venetian vases instead of the art nouveau music-stool she coveted, Vera's disappointment turns to panic after a reckless shopping trip leaves her with the forbidden stool — and a wheel of Gorgonzola ripening ins...

The Christmas Fairy of Strasburg is a romantic fairy tale set in medieval Germany, following the cold-hearted Count Otto, who discovers an enchanted spring on Christmas Eve and loses his ring to unseen hands. That night, the Fairy Queen Ernestine arrives at his castle — bringing with her the first-ever Christmas tree, glittering with diamonds and gems. Otto wins her heart and her hand, but their h...

"The Christmas at Greccio" recounts a December night when Brother Francis of Assisi walks moonlit Italian hills, pauses among sleeping shepherds, and devises a remarkable surprise for the village of Greccio. On Christmas Eve, crowds of peasants, charcoal burners, and shepherds gather by torchlight to discover a real stable, a live ox and ass, and a sleeping infant in a hay-filled manger — the firs...

"The Holy Night" by Selma Lagerlöf unfolds as a grandmother's Christmas tale about a man who ventures into the cold night seeking fire for his newborn child. Dogs refuse to bite him, sheep part silently beneath his feet, a hurled staff swerves away, and glowing embers leave his hands unburned. A gruff shepherd watches each miracle in bewilderment — until one small act of compassion cracks open his...