Ririro.com - Short Stories

"An Old-time Christmas" captures 'Liza Ann Lewis, a Black mother in New York who has spent ten years longing for the warm, abundant Christmas celebrations of her Southern childhood. Scraping together savings, she finally plans to give her thirteen-year-old son Jimmy a taste of the old ways. But on Christmas Eve, Jimmy is arrested for shooting craps with pennies, and 'Liza Ann must spend every save...

"Christmas Eve on Lonesome" follows Buck, a man released from prison who rides through a snowy mountain hollow consumed by one purpose: killing the enemy who betrayed him and stole his liberty. Concealed in an apple tree outside a remote cabin, pistol drawn, he peers through a lit window at the moment he has waited three years for — only to find something he never expected waiting in the firelight...

"The Three Christmas Masses" by Alphonse Daudet follows Dom Balaguère, a chaplain so intoxicated by visions of roasted turkeys, golden carp, and truffled feasts that he rushes through three sacred midnight Masses with reckless abandon. Prodded by a bell-ringing altar boy secretly revealed to be the devil himself, the priest skips verses, garbles prayers, and sacrifices devotion for dinner — a fata...

"Christmas in the Children's Hospital Ward" follows Beth, a young nurse who forgoes her own family Christmas to give eight orphaned children their first real holiday celebration. At the heart of the story is David, a bitter boy whose limp earned him only cruel nicknames on the streets, who has decided the world holds nothing good for him. When Beth hangs his stocking while he sleeps and later spea...

"The Worker in Sandalwood" tells the story of Hyacinthe, a lonely fourteen-year-old carpenter's apprentice in a small winter village, who must finish a delicate sandalwood cabinet by Christmas morning or face his master's cruelty. Exhausted and weeping, he opens the workshop door to a quiet-eyed stranger who speaks of warm southern lands and offers to help with the carving. As dawn approaches, som...

"A Christmas Mistake" brings Montgomery's warm storytelling to a struggling widow's Christmas Eve disappointment, when Mrs. Grant must tell her five eager children there will be no turkey and no feast this year. Then an absent-minded schoolteacher delivers a mistaken invitation from her estranged cousin Cornelia Millar — a woman with a comfortable home, a long-held grudge, and a kitchen full of mi...

"A Christmas Inspiration" by Lucy Maud Montgomery follows five young women spending Christmas Eve at a boarding house, unable to travel home for the holidays. When Beth notices the pale, isolated Miss Allen — a long-term resident with no gifts, no visitors, and no one to remember her — Jean hatches a plan to change that. The girls pool their money, rush out into the frosty night, and conspire to l...

"The Osbornes' Christmas" by Lucy Maud Montgomery follows the junior Osborne children — Frank, Ida, the twins, and young Darby — who have grown bored and cynical about Christmas, dreading the same routines year after year. When their visiting Cousin Myra asks whether they've ever tried giving Christmas to someone else, everything changes. The children pool their gift money to host a festive dinner...

"A Christmas Miracle" is a short story about John Spencer, a struggling frontier lawyer who moves west with his wife Ann after her wealthy Virginia family dismisses him as unworthy. When Ann loses her sight and quietly pines for a Christmas parcel from home — knowing none will come — John secretly creates one himself, forging cards from every cold relative who once scorned him. The deception is di...

"One Christmas Eve" follows a group of snowbound traveling salesmen and newspaper reporters stranded in a small Kansas town the night before Christmas. Frustrated at missing the holidays with their families, they stumble into a modest church Christmas celebration — and when the collection plate reaches them, their spontaneous generosity stuns the congregation. The story captures a fleeting moment...

Billy's Christmas Greeting by Eugenia Rabbas opens on a bitter domestic standoff: Marjorie is furious after Billy Dunning storms out, slamming the door and leaving her pride wounded the day before Christmas. Determined not to apologise, she even cancels his gift order — only to discover the bookstore forgot to follow her instructions. When Billy appears on her doorstep, clutching Romeo and Juliet...

"A Shepherd's Christmas" by Temple Bailey follows a nineteen-year-old mountain shepherd torn between staying at a Christmas gathering with the pink-cheeked girl he loves and returning to his flock caught in a sudden snowstorm. When a minister's words about faithful shepherds strike him like a blow, the boy slips away into the blizzard to save his sheep — knowing it may cost him the girl. The story...

"The Broken Christmas Doll" follows Jack Harley, freshly released from San Quentin Prison on Christmas Eve, adrift in a festive crowd with no friends, no job, and no hope. When a small act of kindness — retrieving a stranger's fallen parcel — leads him to a warm family home, a simple meal, and the laughter of three children on Christmas morning, Jack's certainty that the world is hostile begins to...

"Captain Eli's Best Ear" is a Christmas short story set in the quiet seaside village of Sponkannis, where retired mariner Captain Eli Bunker hatches a plan to celebrate the holiday for the first time in years. Enlisting his crusty neighbor Captain Cephas and the capable widow Mrs. Trimmer to provide a little orphaned girl with a proper Christmas tree and stocking, Captain Eli finds his careful arr...

"The Gospel According To Joan" is a sharp, warm short story set in a wintry New England town just days before Christmas. Thirteen-year-old Joan Brooks arrives on the doorstep of the well-to-do Mrs. Sarah Bannister, selling needlework from a bag — needlework that turns out to be Sarah's own, taken from her parlor. What Joan has done, and why, unravels with startling calm, leaving Sarah, her sharp-t...

"Christmas in Poganuc" follows young Dolly Cushing through two consecutive Christmases in a small New England village, where the arrival of Episcopal church celebrations stirs her with music, candlelight, and a glittering star she half believes to be miraculous. Sent to bed while the rest of the household joins the festivities, Dolly sneaks out into the freezing night, drawn irresistibly toward th...

"How the Captain Made Christmas" gathers a group of city men around a club fireplace days before Christmas, trading memories of holidays past. When Lesponts shares his story of a chance railway journey through the Virginia hills, the real protagonist emerges: an elderly Pullman conductor of unshakeable good humor who defuses quarrels, tends to a sick passenger, leads his guests over a Civil War ba...

"A Christmas-Eve Suit" follows Hedley Marstern, a methodical young lawyer who sets out one Christmas Eve to settle the most important case of his life: choosing between two charming women he has quietly observed for years. A sleigh ride with both Carrie Mitchell and Lottie Waldo takes a dangerous turn when the horse breaks through thin river ice, revealing each woman's true character under pressur...

"At Christmas Time" is a short story by Anton Chekhov that follows Vasilisa, an aging Russian peasant woman who pays a tavern scribe to write a letter to her daughter Yefimya, not seen in four years. The pompous, semi-literate Yegor fills the letter with military gibberish while Vasilisa's real grief goes unspoken. When the letter finally reaches Yefimya in Petersburg, it unleashes a flood of long...

"The Christmas Angel" by Henry van Dyke opens in Heaven's Country Beyond the Stars, where three great archangels — Michael, Uriel, and Raphael — debate how to heal the suffering of mankind. Should it be through force, wisdom, or love? Before they reach a conclusion, a small child-angel arrives singing that the Son of God will be born as a man. The celestial host follows him through the night sky,...

"The Christmas Banquet" by Nathaniel Hawthorne unfolds as a tale-within-a-tale: a writer named Roderick reads aloud a story about a peculiar annual feast, funded by a morbid bequest, that gathers the ten most wretched people alive each Christmas. Among the grief-stricken, tormented, and broken guests sits one unsettling outlier — the young Gervayse Hastings, who attends year after year yet appears...

"Christmas Eve" immerses readers in the richly detailed world of an old English country estate on the most magical night of the year. The narrator arrives at Bracebridge Hall with his companion Frank, where the Squire — a devoted champion of ancient traditions — hosts a sprawling family gathering filled with Yule-clogs, mistletoe, old games, and candlelit suppers. Through eccentric Master Simon's...

"The Lost Child" follows M. Jean-Baptiste Godefroy, a cold and self-absorbed Parisian banker, whose world collapses on Christmas Eve when his four-year-old son Raoul goes missing near the city's outskirts. The frantic search leads him to a humble crippled vegetable seller and a sharp seven-year-old orphan boy who sheltered Raoul through the night. Confronted by the warmth and selfless generosity o...

"A Luckless Santa Claus" is a Christmas short story in which Harry Talbot, a well-off young man with more charm than common sense, is challenged by his fiancée Dorothy to give away twenty-five dollars to strangers before ten o'clock. What seems like an easy task becomes a bruising adventure through Manhattan's streets on Christmas Eve — rejected by newsboys, outwitted by a newsstand vendor, and ul...

"A Klondike Christmas" drops readers into Christmas Day 1897 at a remote Yukon cabin, where teenage brothers Clarence and George face a holiday dinner of little more than bacon, beans, and bread. What begins as a comedic inventory of meager supplies transforms as a parade of frost-covered strangers arrives at their door — starving prospectors hauling moose meat, an "Eldorado King" hunting dog thie...