The Christmas Companion: Stories from Around the World

Foreword: what these stories ask of a household

Again and again, the stories in this book turn to the same person at Christmas: someone who is going without, far from home, unfree or alone, and the people near enough to change that.

Scrooge has a warm house and money to spare, and for years he does nothing for the Cratchits, who keep a family of eight on fifteen shillings a week. Vanka writes from a workshop in Moscow to the one person who loves him, and the reader never learns whether the letter arrives. Harriet Jacobs spends Christmas in a hiding place too low to stand in, sewing clothes for children she can only watch through a hole in the wall. A father in “The Holy Night” walks through the night to find fire for his wife and newborn child, and a hard shepherd gives it. Artaban gives the jewels he saved for a king to people in need on the road, and learns at the end that this was the gift that mattered.

The writers lived in England, the United States of America, Denmark, Sweden, Ukraine, Russia and Australia, over eighty years. They wrote from grand houses and rented rooms, from farms and city streets; some were born enslaved and wrote their way to freedom.

So this book begins by handing the question to the household about to read it. Before the Christmas meal, look around your own table. Who is missing this year? Someone who is no longer with us, someone far away, someone who is lonely, or someone you have never thought to invite. Say their names. And if one of them can still be reached, send the letter, make the call, or set the extra place. That is what these stories ask, and the pages that follow show how twelve writers answered.

Note on this edition

The stories and poems in this book were first published between 1823 and 1905. The selection, the arrangement, the introductions, the notes, the essays, the reading plan, the glossary and the illustrations are new to this edition.

Every piece is printed as its author or translator wrote it, including words and ideas from its own time. Where a word has changed its meaning, or an idea of the period needs explaining, a note explains it beside the text, so that the author’s words stay whole and the reader is never left to guess.

Four pieces were written in other languages. They appear in these translations:

• Hans Christian Andersen, “The Fir-Tree”, translated from the Danish by Mrs H. B. Paull (Susanna Mary Paull), from Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales (London: Frederick Warne, edition of 1888).
• Selma Lagerlöf, “The Holy Night”, translated from the Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard, from Christ Legends (New York, 1908).
• Nikolai Gogol, “The Night of Christmas Eve”, translated from the Russian by George Tolstoy, from Cossack Tales (London: James Blackwood, 1860). It is printed here under the title “Christmas Eve”, from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.
• Anton Chekhov, “Vanka”, translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett, from The Cook’s Wedding and Other Stories (1922).

The twelve pieces

1. A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens · England, 1843
2. The Gift of the Magi O. Henry · United States of America, 1905
3. The Fir-Tree Hans Christian Andersen · Denmark, 1844
4. The Holy Night Selma Lagerlöf · Sweden, 1904
5. Christmas Eve Nikolai Gogol · Ukraine, 1832
6. Vanka Anton Chekhov · Russia, 1886
7. Christmas in Their Own Words Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs · United States of America, 1845 and 1861
8. Christmas Poems Paul Laurence Dunbar · United States of America, 1893 to 1905
9. The Ghosts of Many Christmases Henry Lawson · Australia, 1902
10. The Story of the Other Wise Man Henry van Dyke · United States of America, 1893
11. Is There a Santa Claus? Francis Pharcellus Church · United States of America, 1897
12. A Visit from St. Nicholas Clement Clarke Moore (attributed) · United States of America, 1823

Also in the book

• Foreword: what these stories ask of a household
• How to use this book
• A short history of Christmas reading around the world
• Three essays: “Christmas Eve in Ukraine and in Sweden”, “Children at Christmas” and “The Christmas week in their own words”
• The twelve-day reading plan
• Write your own Christmas story
• Glossary
• Afterword: remembering together
• Sources

Selection, notes, reading plan and illustrations by Kenneth McDonald.