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.

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