For a lot of people, the Holiday season is usually the hardest time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, like reading good stories. That’s why we’re finishing our Holiday Season Reading series with 25 Christmas short stories: bite-sized tales that can be finished in a sitting. You can sink into them quickly without worrying if you’ll ever find out what happens next.

To optimise your time, all the titles displayed here are in the public domain, with links to the text and a LibriVox narration or YouTube when available. So, you can still enjoy those great festive tales even when you can’t just sit up with a hot chocolate mug to read them.

Also, since ‘festive’ means something different to everyone – or to the same person at different moments – the stories are grouped by mood from cosy and comforting to the genuinely eerie. Pick one that fits your day and seize the moment.

Cosy and Lighthearted Narratives

Comfort reading at its finest. These stories are gentle, often humorous, and guaranteed to lower your blood pressure. Expect happy endings, domestic warmth, and the lighter side of holiday chaos.

A Hint for Next Christmas by A. A. Milne (12 min or less). A humorous piece by the author of Winnie the Pooh that pokes fun at Christmas gift-giving and card-sending, arguing for simpler, more practical presents. Milne describes the awkwardness of receiving bulky, inconvenient gifts that you may appreciate but dread transporting home, and the anecdote about how a guest who arrived at a party without presents sorted out his faux pas. [YouTube]

The Falsoms’ Christmas Dinner by L. M. Montgomery (12 min or less). This is a Christmas short story of poor siblings Alexina and Stephen Falsom trying to pull off a good Christmas dinner for their visiting wealthy uncle, hoping for financial help. A charming tale about pride and poverty softening into community help and Christmas generosity, with some light humour along the way. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

A Christmas Mistake by L. M. Montgomery (12 min or less). A poor widow, Linda Grant, tells her five children they can’t afford Christmas. Her family expects a bleak Christmas until a simple mix-up involving a Christmas dinner invitation pulls them into unexpected kindness and old social ties. [Librivox] [YouTube]

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Arthur Conan Doyle (20+ min). Nothing better than a Sherlock Holmes mystery that begins with a lost hat and a Christmas goose, leading to the discovery of a stolen precious gem. A perfect mix of festive setting and detective intrigue. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

Wistful, Bittersweet Christmas Stories

For when you’re in a reflective mood. These tales lean into the bittersweet nature of the season with its nostalgia, missed connections, and the quiet melancholy that often sits just underneath the tinsel.

The Fir-Tree by Hans Christian Andersen (up to 20 min). A young fir tree is never satisfied with the present, always longing to be taller and better, until it’s cut down to become a rich family’s Christmas tree. Andersen uses the tree’s inner monologue to poke at ambition, impatience, and the fantasy that happiness is always somewhere else. [YouTube]

Babouscka (12 min or less). This Russian Christian legend tells the story of a woman who refused a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to join a holy journey because she didn’t want to leave the warmth and comfort of her home. The story is told like a folktale – simple, symbolic, and quietly emotional – focused on regret, generosity, and the hope of putting things right. [LibriVox]

An Unfinished Christmas Story by O. Henry (12 min or less). This is a deliberately meta, comedic Christmas sketch where the author riffs on what ‘real’ Christmas stories are supposed to be, then wanders into a rambling. He keeps interrupting himself with side comments and observations, introducing the eerie, vinegar-pale landlady Mrs Kannon and a lonely young lodger, Stickney, who’s broke on Christmas Eve.

A Russian Christmas Party by Leo Tolstoy (20+ min). The noble Rostow family is facing financial ruin, so Nicola’s mother wants him to marry a wealthy heiress, though his heart belongs to Sonia. Amidst this tension, the family celebrates with traditional Russian ‘mummery’ – dressing in elaborate costumes to visit neighbours and practising superstitious rituals like ‘mirror-gazing’ to predict the future.

A Christmas Tree and a Wedding by Fyodor Dostoevsky (12 min or less). This is a biting, satirical Christmas short story set at a wealthy children’s Christmas/New Year party, narrated by an awkward onlooker.​ Behind the sweets, toys, and polite chatter, Dostoevsky exposes adult status games and social cruelty, especially toward the poor governess’s child. [YouTube]

Dark Christmas Tales

Christmas isn’t always merry. These stories explore the bleak midwinter, focusing on poverty, isolation, or the sharp sting of conscience. Those aren’t ‘fun’ reads, but they are powerful and deeply human.

The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen (12 min or less). A classic, bleak, iconic winter tale set on a freezing New Year’s Eve, following a destitute child trying to sell matches on the street. As the night drags on, she searches for warmth and relief, and the story contrasts her fragile hope with the indifference of the people around her.​ [LibriVox] [YouTube]

Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson (up to 20 min).  A dark Christmas Eve story of a man who grapples with his conscience. Markheim is trapped alone with ticking clocks, mirrors, and his own panic as he searches for a way out. Then a mysterious visitor appears, forcing a sharp, unsettling conversation about guilt, temptation, and what kind of person Markheim really is. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

The Christmas Banquet by Nathaniel Hawthorne (20+ min). This Hawthorne at his most wickedly unfestive: a Christmas dinner created by a strange will is reserved only for the ten ‘most miserable’ people money can find. Instead of warmth and carols, the room fills with bitterness and dark humour. Among the rotating invitees is a recurring guest, whose sorrow is harder to name than poverty or loss.

Eerie Christmas Ghost Stories

A nod to the old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. Here you’ll find the supernatural, the uncanny, and the gothic: strange visitors, haunted churches, and goblins who don’t care about your holiday spirit.

Maese Pérez, the Organist by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (20+ min). A gothic-tinged Spanish Christmas legend set in Seville’s convent church of Santa Inés. Nobles, crowds, and clergy gather for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to listen to a poor, blind, saintly old organist whose playing is said to sound like angels. As jealousy flares, the night’s ceremony turns tense and uncanny. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton by Charles Dickens (up to 20 min). On Christmas Eve, supernatural goblins swoop in and ‘steal’ a sour, Christmas-hating gravedigger from an old abbey town churchyard. They drag him into a bizarre, darkly comic ordeal meant to shake his bitterness. This Christmas short story is often considered a precursor to A Christmas Carol. [YouTube]

The Ghost of Christmas Eve by J. M. Barrie (12 min or less). By the author of Peter Pan, this is a gentle, ghostly tale told by a mother to her children on Christmas Eve. It involves a mysterious visitor and the lingering spirit of love in a house. [Youtube]

The Three Low Masses by Alphonse Daudet(12 min or less). This is a sly, Christmas Eve satire about a country priest whose appetite (and greed) outweighs his reverence. Eager to reach an extravagant holiday feast, he tries to race through the three required Masses, treating sacred ritual like items on a checklist. Daudet plays it for dark comedy, but the tension is real: the faster the priest rushes, the more the night feels charged with judgment. [YouTube]

Hopeful & Heartening Short Stories

Stories that start in the dark but find their way to the light. These narratives often feature hardship, poverty, or estrangement, but they ultimately turn towards grace, charity, and connection.

The Cobbler and His Guest by Leo Tolstoy (12 min or less).  A meaningful story about Father Martin, a shoemaker in Marseilles who, while waiting to receive a visit from Jesus himself, decides to open his door to the needy on Christmas. [YouTube]

The Star Money by The Brothers Grimm (12 min or less). A very short, deeply moving tale of a poor orphan girl’s extreme generosity being rewarded with a miracle on a winter night. It’s simple and symbolic in tone; it centres on faith, generosity, and trust. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

A Christmas Guest by Selma Lagerlöf (up to 20 min). An old, stubborn, and irreligious woman is forced to spend Christmas with devout relatives. A seemingly minor event – sheltering a wandering beggar – awakens a long-dormant sense of compassion and connection. [LibriVox] ​

Santa Claus’ Message: A Christmas Story by E. Franklin Tregaskis (up to 20 min). Seen largely through kids’ hopeful eyes, this tale is set in a mining camp in Australia. A fossicker’s family struggles as Christmas approaches with no money and mounting pressure from the new storekeeper. When the children overhear adult worries, they start talking about Santa, and one quiet act of kindness sets a chain of events in motion that feels like a miracle to them.

A Christmas Story: A True Story by Jay Frankston (12 min or less). This is a first-person autobiographical piece about a Jewish man who, feeling left out of Christmas as a child, becomes ‘Santa’ (first for his own kids, then for other children) after finding letters addressed to the fictitious figure.​

Uplifting & Classic Christmas Tales

Pure festive buoyancy. If you want stories that feel like a warm hug from start to finish – or offer a whimsical escape into fantasy and childhood wonder – this is where youshould look.

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry (12 min or less).  This beloved American tale follows a young couple, Della and Jim, who make sacrificial gifts for each other during a financially challenging Christmas, discovering what the greatest gift of all is. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (up to 20 min). This is a whimsical American fantasy in which Santa is abducted by creatures who resent the happiness and ‘goodness’ Christmas spreads. It’s light, brisk, and kid-friendly, but it also has a satirical edge: the villains aren’t after toys, they’re after the spirit behind them. [LibriVox] [YouTube]

A Southern Cross Fairy Tale by Kate McCosh Clark (20+ min). In this 19th-century illustrated Christmas-and-fairy-tale fantasy, Santa is reimagined for the Southern Hemisphere, using New Zealand settings and imagery. It’s a childlike, storybook adventure with fairies, goblins and magical interruptions, built around getting Christmas gifts (and Christmas cheer) delivered despite obstacles on the way.

Christmas Every Day by William Dean Howells (12 min or less). A classic humorous tale by the British satirist. A little girl wishes Christmas would happen every day, and her wish comes true with increasingly disastrous and hilarious results. [Librivox] [Youtube]

Wrapping Up

There you have it: 25 different ways to experience the season, from a desolate mining camp in Australia to the wintry New York City on Christmas Eve.

We close our Holiday Season Reading series now. We hope you find a Christmas story here that becomes a new annual tradition for you.

Happy reading, and Merry Christmas!