Wow. Talking of word pictures. Think I’ll shed a little tear now.
This x1000.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the old tried-and-true classics like A Christmas Carol and Gift of the Magi, but this deserves more love. Beautiful poetic descriptions that only the likes of Dylan Thomas can pull off.
If anyone’s interested, here’s The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern–the inspiration for It’s A Wonderful Life. It’s interesting to see the differences between the story and the movie–to see how they actually managed to add stuff and lengthen it but NOT make it seem padded.
Great one. You hooked me.
Rex Stout’s **Christmas Party **in Four to Go (Nero Wolfe).
“Over the Hills and Everywhere” by Manley Wade Wellman. (This might be a retold folktale. There’s a frame story of Silver John telling it to a bunch of children at a party.) It’s very sweet.
I tried this and got a scanned page which I could not expand to make legible . (Samsung Galaxy Tab II)
Sorry you had trouble reading it. If you want a summary…
“Larry,” now an adult, remembers his childhood in Ireland. He was a rambunctious, naughty kid, unlike his studious, goody-goody little brother. Larry’s mother was always nagging him to read and study, which he hated.
On Christmas morning, he woke up early, and ran to his stocking. There was nothing in it but pencils and books. In his little brother’s stocking, there was a toy gun. Larry figured a toy gun is better than a book any day, so he switched the contents of the stockings. He figured no one but Santa would ever know the difference.
Then…
When Larry and his brother woke up their parents to show off their presents, Larry’s mother was horrified, and berated him for stealing his brother’s toy.
Larry races out of the apartment in tears. In just a few seconds, Larry realizes and understands all kinds of things he hadn’t before (but that O’Connor’s descriptions had already made clear to the reader)… that there is no Santa Claus, that the presents came from his mother, who had to BEG for pennies from his drunken bum of a father, to buy the kids SOME kind of presents for Christmas.
Larry finally understands that his mother had been COUNTING on Larry to get an education and make something of himself, to rescue the family from desperation and poverty… and instead, by stealing a toy, Larry has convinced his mother that he’s destined to be a worthless, drunken rotter like his father.
Thanks ** astorian **! As you say, heartbreaking .