Christmas Stories

For ballet dancers and fans, Christmastime means Nutcracker time. With Good Reason’s Allison Quantz takes us backstage for this year’s Nutcracker production at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

The ballet version of The Nutcracker–the version most of us know–is all sugarplums and snowflakes. But the original German story is darker and much more complex. Sarah Hillenbrand Varela and Erik Varela explore a deeper history of Clara and the Nutcracker.

Is it possible that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the root of all secular Christmas stories? Eric Lorentzen argues that Dickens’ interest in childhood and how it affects the rest of our lives comes through in A Christmas Carol and has made its way into pretty much every other part of pop culture.

The Christmas dinner farce is everywhere in today’s Christmas stories. Think National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or more recently, that stressful episode of The Bear. More than a hundred years earlier, James Joyce framed a short story around a Christmas dinner, not-so-festively titled, “The Dead.” Siân White digs into what’s so moving about Joyce’s Christmas short story.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas has a lot to teach us about generosity and community and love. Laura Kimball says on top of all that, there are also some interior design lessons to be learned from the story.

Another early 20th century Christmas classic is O Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi.” It tells of a husband and wife who struggle to get the money to buy Christmas gifts for each other. Diane Griffiths says that the financial and emotional strain in “Gift of the Magi” is real and important to remember around the holidays.