The House of Seven Santas
The House of Seven Santas
Christmas FeaturesChristmas Stories

The House of Seven Santas

Editor’s Note: On December 1st, 2017 seven Christmas podcasters came together to share the 1912 short story The House of Seven Santas. MyMerryChristmas.com participated by providing the concluding segment of the story as can be heard via the player below. https://mymerrychristmas.com/mlp/mlpepisode22.mp3 To start at the beginning, please visit the Christmas Past Podcast hosted by Brian Earl to hear Part 1 of the story. Then jump to the Can’t Wait for …

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Jacob Marley
Jacob Marley
Christmas MemoriesChristmas NewsChristmas Stories

Jacob Marley and Me

(Editors Note: This guest blogger wishes to remain anonymous. Over a period of three weeks of July 2017 I met with her by phone as she told me her story and explained how she wanted it told. It has been through many revisions. This is a true story, difficult in parts to read. But at the same time it is one of the most profound Christmas stories I have ever …

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Christmas Traditions
Christmas Traditions
Christmas FeaturesChristmas MemoriesChristmas StoriesChristmas Traditions

My Private Christmas

The presents are all unwrapped. Santa’s stockings are emptied. Signs of yet another great Christmas celebration are everywhere. And my husband and children are asleep. The lights on the tree still shine and this is my time for my private Christmas. It is private because most don’t understand it. I didn’t understand it at first. Like everyone else I grew up with the traditions of Christmas. The mistletoe, the concerts, …

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Christmas
Christmas
Christmas CommunityChristmas StoriesFrugal Christmas

Lessons from a Christmas with No Money

The best Christmas we ever had was the Christmas when we had nothing. A series of events during a difficult year led to that best Christmas. In early April I was diagnosed with breast cancer. A rush of doctor visits, a surgery, and months of recovery led to an extended period of time away from my work. As Thanksgiving approached I was still too weak and sick to return to …

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Mr. Dog's Christmas
Mr. Dog's Christmas
Christmas Stories

Mr. Dog’s Christmas at Hollow Tree Inn

As a boy one of my secret adventures was to scour the bookshelves at my grandmother’s house for books I could not find anywhere else. Grandma and I were a match made in heaven – I was a bookworm and she was a school teacher. I read not only from her vast collection of Reader’s Digest and Saturday Evening Post but I also greatly enjoyed her collection of children’s books …

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Christmas FeaturesChristmas OpinionChristmas PastChristmas Stories

Reading Dickens

Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carol backwards and forwards. Pick a version by decade and you’re bound to find one you love. Everyone can claim to have seen a big or a small screen version of it. But have you ever read it? I confess it never passed in front of my eyes until I was an adult. It was during one of my first Christmas seasons alone …

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Christmas HistoryChristmas PastChristmas Stories

The Halifax Christmas Disaster of 1917

By B. Francis Morlan Editor’s Note: Every December the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree to the City of Boston, Massachusetts. This story explains how that came about. December of 1917 was a time when the world was in transition. The horrors of World War I were known and the prospects of a merry Christmas were subdued in communities across the world as men and women left …

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Christmas Stories

The Birds’ Christmas Carol

Contributed by LoiS-sez Note: This is actually the first chapter in the book by the title of The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin in 1886, but it’s both an explanation of the book’s title and a wonderful Christmas story…especially for anyone born at Christmas time. It was very early Christmas morning, and in the stillness of the dawn, with the soft snow falling on the house-tops, a little …

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Christmas Stories

The Mistletoe Bough

Contributed by LoiS-sez This is actually a ballad with lyrics by Thomas Haynes Bayly. I’ve never been able to find the music by Sir Henry Bishop, but I use the refrain for my own re-telling as it’s said to be based on a traditional legend. The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall; And the baron’s retainers were blithe and gay, And …

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Christmas Stories

A Great Tree

Contributed by Merry Carey Here is a fine old Christmas story from 1914 about Calliope Marsh, a woman determined to gather her entire neighborhood under one Christmas tree. A Great Tree From Neighborhood Stories by Zona Gale (1914) I never had felt so much like Christmas, said Calliope Marsh, as I did that year. “I wish’t,” I says, when it got ’most time, “I wish’t I knew somebody to have …

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Christmas Stories

Book Review: Good King Wenceslas

By James Keefe If you’re like most people chances are you have heard the annual holiday reference to Good King Wenceslas but you have never quite understood his story or what it has to do with Christmas. Out now from Deseret Book.com is a new illustrated children’s volume that beautifully tells the story in word and picture and includes a DVD copy of the narration of the story supplied by …

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Christmas Stories

A Forgotten Classic: The Christmas Angel

Contributed by Merry Carey This little book is a forgotten gem of Christmas literature. When it was published in 1910, Living Age magazine reviewed the book by saying, “Not since Charles Dickens laid down his pen forever has there been a prettier Christmas story written, one more full of the real spirit of Christmas or conveying a more seasonable lesson.” High praise, but well deserved. When you first begin to …

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Christmas Stories

Christmas Gifts, Christmas Voices

Christmas Gifts, Christmas Voices is a short novel written by John Allen about one man’s Christmas experience after suffering a devastating personal tragedy. “It was a perfect life. And it was hard for Eric Sanders to imagine how things could be any better…” So begins the story and the reader knows right away the author will not waste much time in telling how the perfect life falls apart. But tragedy …

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