This holiday story will only be available for a limited time on Litreading, but will always be available on our holiday story podcast, Season's Readings.

First published in 1905, “The Boy with the Box” is a gentle Christmas story about childhood pride, unexpected generosity, and the quiet ways kindness reshapes a heart. It captures a winter world of skates and shop windows, family love and small sacrifices—where the true gift arrives not in a box, but in understanding.

Mary Griggs Van Voorhis (1876–1938) was an American writer whose short stories often focused on children, family life, and moments of quiet moral awakening. Writing in the early twentieth century, she was known for her warm realism and her ability to find emotional truth in everyday scenes. Her work appeared widely in magazines of the era and remains admired for its gentle humanity and timeless perspective.

Check out our multiverse of short story podcasts at shortstoryverses.com.

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.

You've heard it dozens of times, so why not once more. Here's a Visit from St. Nicholas, was it penned by Clement Moore?

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

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.