Zahid Ahmed Tapadar
(zahidtapadar@gmail.com)
In the glow of candlelight and the hush of winter nights, Christmas enters literature not merely as a feast day, but as a moment of revelation. From the soot-grey streets of Victorian London to Latin American convents, from rural French Provence to the frozen plains of Russia, writers have used Christmas to reveal the human heart at its most fragile, most hopeful, and most contradictory.
This is Christmas as storytellers see it - a setting, a symbol, a season that opens the door to wonder and truth. Around the world, writers from diverse lands have seized the festival as a lens through which to reflect society, childhood, change and hope.
The English-Speaking Canon: Foundational Christmas Tales
Charles Dickens: The Social Conscience of Christmas- published on December 19, 1843, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol opens on a bleak London Christmas Eve. Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser, is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, and he undergoes a radical transformation. The work endures through its articulation of Christmas as social reckoning - addressing poverty, child labour, and Victorian society's margins - and how Dickens helped shape our modern Christmas image: turkey, family gathering, and generosity of spirit.
O. Henry: The Irony of Love- published in The New York Sunday World on December 10, 1905, "The Gift of the Magi" tells of James and Della Dillingham Young, a poor couple who each sacrifice their most prized possession to buy Christmas gifts for the other. O. Henry's reflection that this couple proved wisest because they gave from pure love has made it a cornerstone of American Christmas literature.
Hans Christian Andersen: Beauty in Tragedy- "The Little Match Girl" (1845) centres on a poor girl selling matches on a cold winter's night. As she lights matches for warmth, visions of Christmas warmth appear before her tragic death. The story accentuates social inequality and life's fragility, serving as both social commentary and spiritual meditation.
E.T.A. Hoffmann: Gateway to Fantasy- Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, 1816) opens on Christmas Eve when a nutcracker toy comes to life, leading into battle with the Mouse King. The story invokes the Christmas gift-exchange ritual and childhood wonder's transition into otherworldly fantasy.
Dylan Thomas: Memory Made Lyrical-A Child's Christmas in Wales (1952 broadcast, 1955 book) lyrically recollects childhood Christmases: snow, mischievous children, singing, and long banquets. It captures the festival as an evocative memory, steeped in nostalgia and place.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Intimate Fantasy Letters from Father Christmas (1976)-a collection of letters Tolkien wrote to his children between 1920 and 1943. With illustrations and North Pole stamps, Christmas becomes an imaginative household myth: magical reindeer, goblin invasions, polar bear assistants - miniature fantasy rather than commercial spectacle.
Chris Van Allsburg and John Grisham: The Polar Express (1985) tells of a boy boarding a magical train to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, using Christmas as the hinge of belief-moving from doubt to wonder's reaffirmation. In contrast, Skipping Christmas (2001) satirises suburban ritual when a couple skips Christmas for a cruise, examining commercialism and social expectation.
Beyond the Anglophone World: Christmas in Global Voices
Russian Melancholy
Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree" (1876) emerged from his December 1875 experiences with beggar children on St Petersburg streets. A six-year-old boy awakens in a frigid cellar beside his dying mother on Christmas morning. Wandering harsh winter streets, peering through windows at lavish celebrations, he's rejected and abused. Behind a woodstack, he experiences a vision of Christ's Christmas tree, surrounded by other frozen, starved children. Dostoevsky gives voice to the voiceless, forcing readers to confront society's indifference.
France’s Realism, Ritual, and Moral Fables
Guy de Maupassant's "Conte de Noël" (December 25, 1882, Le Gaulois) uses Christmas night to tell a moral fable. A blacksmith's wife, after eating a mysterious egg found in the snow, appears possessed. During midnight mass on Christmas Eve, the priest uses the holy sacrament to "cure" her. The story blends the supernatural with Christmas ritual, exploring faith, superstition, and belief's power.
Alphonse Daudet's "Les trois messes basses" (1875, Contes du lundi; 1879, Lettres de mon moulin) is set in 18th-century Provence. Dom Balaguère, a gluttonous priest distracted by feast thoughts, rushes through three Christmas masses. As punishment, he's condemned to repeat them for three hundred years. The story uses humour to explore temptation, religious duty, and spiritual obligation versus earthly desire.
Latin America: Devotion,
Liturgy and Local Colour
Rubén Darío's "Cuento de Nochebuena" (December 26, 1893, La Tribuna, Buenos Aires) follows Brother Longinos of Santa María, skilled in manuscript illumination, cooking, gardening, and organ-playing. On Christmas Eve during midnight mass, he experiences a mystical vision of the Three Wise Men worshipping the Christ child. The story reflects Navidad's devotional and ritual aspects in Latin America, emphasizing liturgical beauty and spiritual transcendence over commercialized spectacle.
Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (Mexico) wrote Las misas de Navidad (late 19th century)-sketches focusing on Christmas mass as a Mexican social ritual. Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay/Argentina) wrote "Cuento laico de Navidad" (early 20th century), exploring modern life, myth, and jungle wildness versus domestic hearth.
American Memory and Nostalgia
Pearl S. Buck's "Christmas Day in the Morning" (Collier's, 1955) follows Rob, awakening at four on Christmas morning - the hour when, fifty years earlier, his father called him for farm chores. As a fifteen-year-old, Rob overheard his father's reluctance to wake him. That Christmas morning, Rob secretly completed all the milking, giving his father extra sleep. Decades later, Rob realizes the truest gifts come from hearts, not stores.
Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" (Mademoiselle, December 1956) is largely autobiographical, describing seven-year-old Buddy and his elderly cousin Sook. Each December, they created traditions: baking thirty-one fruitcakes for friends and strangers, chopping down Christmas trees, and making handmade kites as gifts. Despite Depression-era poverty, they found joy in giving. Capote considered this his most perfect work - love and companionship, transforming hardship into magic.
African Voices: Migration, Urban Life, and Hope
Contemporary African literature embraces Christmas, exploring migration, diaspora, and traditional-modern life. Ufuoma Bakporhe (Nigeria) wrote "This Is Christmas" (Kalahari Review, December 2017), depicting Nigerian Christmas's sensory and familial rhythms: urban apartments, church services, and home memories. These works highlight how globalized seasonal commercialism enters local contexts, revealing local cultural rhythms' resilience.
What Christmas Literature Reveals: From Dickens to Darío, Christmas marks moral reckoning and social critique - consistently illuminating social inequality. Whether it is Dickens's poor children, Andersen's match girl, or Dostoevsky's beggar boy, the festival's abundance makes poverty more visible and urgent. Works like Hoffmann's Nutcracker, Thomas's Child's Christmas, and Tolkien's Letters lean into childhood wonder and memory, positioning Christmas as a magical threshold when belief becomes possible. Including French, Latin American, Russian, and African texts reveals Christmas isn't monolithic but adapts to local liturgy, climate, and cultural rhythms - yet evokes universals: warmth, family, hope, and renewal.
Why This Resonates Today: Christmas literature maps how the festival carries symbolic weight across cultures. When we read Scrooge's transformation, a Russian beggar child's vision, or a Nigerian family's urban celebration, we encounter more than holiday tales - we inherit models of social conscience and intimate fantasy. These stories remind us that the festival transcends climate, culture, and language while revealing universal truths about belonging, memory, and hope.
Final Thoughts: Christmas in literature mirrors human ritual-- illuminating, giving and receiving, memory and stillness, and how societies reimagine themselves. Whether in Victorian London's snowy streets, Germany's toy-strewn parlours, tropical Lagos, Latin American convents, frozen Russia, or sunlit Provence, the festival becomes a story. It becomes a question: What world are we making when we say "Merry Christmas", "Feliz Navidad", or "Joyeux Noël"?
Across borders and climates, Christmas literature reveals universals: longing for home, memory's pull, renewal's dream, and society's cracks that illumination exposes. As long as writers seek seasons where wonder collides with truth, Christmas will continue appearing, not as decoration, but as meaning.