This story is only available here during the holidays, but can be heard year-round at Season's Readings, a part of Short Storyverses at shortstoryverses.com

On Christmas Day in the Morning is a story about family—not as it is imagined, but as it is lived—and the gifts that arrive without wrapping. It was written with music already echoing between its lines. The traditional song of the same name appears directly in the story, assumed to be familiar to its original readers.

For this performance, the music is included not as embellishment, but as part of the text itself— the way it may have lived in the reader’s mind when the story was first published.

Grace S. Richmond (1866–1959) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose work focused on family life, personal responsibility, and the quiet moral decisions that shape ordinary people.

A frequent contributor to publications such as The Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, Richmond was widely read in the early 20th century. Her Christmas stories, in particular, favored restraint over sentimentality—using the holiday as a setting for reflection, reconciliation, and emotional truth.

Her fiction was written to be shared, remembered, and reread—often aloud, and often at Christmas.

“I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In)” Traditional English carol

Performed by Matt Norris & the Moon

Audio sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC BY 3.0)

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

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While this is primarily a story for children, Christmas is the perfect time to explore our inner child and share that spirit with today’s kids. This story originally appeared on my Readastorus podcast.

Being a scarecrow is a hard enough job in the best of times, but when winter comes, it can be miserable. Yet, for one scarecrow, a frosty Christmas brought a wonderful opportunity.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman started writing children’s stories as a teenager to help support her family. She went on to become one of the premier female authors of the late-19th century.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Santa and his friends face the most challenging Christmas in their long history as Santa is kidnapped.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For many children, Christmas is the best day of the year. Yet, often it’s for selfish reasons. Some kids like it so much that they might wish that Christmas day might never end. One little girl father explains what it might be like if it was “Christmas Every Day” by William Dean Howells.

William Dean Howells was a proponent of literary realism. Called “The Dean of American Letters’” he was a playwright, author, critic andThe Atlantic magazine’s third editor.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes we fall so far that we are tempted to cross lines we never would have in better times. Feelings of inadequacy can become particularly acute during the holiday season, when we see so much apparent happiness. Our next story about one woman’s fall from grace and her Christmas redemption.

Brilliant short story author, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman ’s "A Stolen Christmas" was published in Harper's Bazaar on December 24, 1887

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story is only available here during the holidays, but can be heard year-round at Season's Readings, a part of Short Storyverses at shortstoryverses.com

Out on the western chaparral, Christmas doesn’t soften the land so much as sharpen what’s already waiting there—old grudges, old loves, and old wounds that never healed quite right. Madison Lane and Rosita McMullen have built a life together in the years since their wedding was interrupted by a jealous suitor… and a bullet. But Christmas Eve has a long memory in the Frio country, and something—or someone—may be riding back through the brush. O. Henry’s tale unfolds with warmth, tension, and a frontier kind of mercy that arrives in a shape no one expects.

Chaparral Christmas was written by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), the American master of the gently-twisted tale. Known for his frontier characters, ironic turns, and deep affection for ordinary people under pressure, Porter captured both the humor and the heartbreak of American life at the turn of the 20th century. This story reflects his gift for revealing unexpected kindness in the harshest of places.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This holiday tale features Reginald, a fictional young-man born to the Victorian upper crust in England, who finds himself at a stuffy family Christmas party and tries to liven things up a bit.

Saki, the pen name of British author H.H. Munroe, loved skewering the upper class, wielding the weapon of character’s like Reginald, who appeared in several of his short stories.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story is only available here during the holidays, but can be heard year-round at Season's Readings, a part of Short Storyverses at shortstoryverses.com

When a bad harvest on the Canadian prairie means no Christmas for her cousins, a young woman does the only thing she can to rescue their holiday.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story is only available here during the holidays, but can be heard year-round at Season's Readings, a part of Short Storyverses at shortstoryverses.com

When does the end justify the means and who gets to decide? One person's definition of morality may not be shared by others.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story is only available here during the holidays, but can be heard year-round at Season's Readings, a part of Short Storyverses at shortstoryverses.com

How many times have you read “A Christmas Carol” or seen it performed. Every year millions of families rewatch classic Christmas movies like “It a Wonderful Life,” "A Christmas Story" or even "Christmas Vacation?"

For some reason these traditions never get old and create a sense of comfort in their ritual. There are a few short stories that occupy a similar place in our hearts. Like this special holiday reading of O. Henry’s enduring 1905 tale of unselfish love, "The Gift Of the Magi."

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.