Christmas Stories and Legends: Twenty Christmas Tales by Hans Christian Andersen and Other Wonderful Authors (Timeless Classic Books)

Editor Phebe A. Curtiss worried children, especially, might get lost in the day's creeping commercialism. She aimed the book at schools and Sunday schools, and assembled twenty bits of Christmas lore to teach a proper observance. She includes, of course, the Nativity story, but other parts of yesterday's Christmas will be much less familiar to modern readers. The song, "White Christmas," hadn't been written yet, and the expression meant something more than snow. People gave white gifts to symbolize purity. The book brings back great-grandfather's Christmas as a gift for today's worriers. This wonderful collection of stories by numerous known authors includes: The Legend of the White Gifts, Her Birthday Dream, The Fir Tree, The Little Match Girl, Little Piccola, The Shepherd's Story, The Story of Christmas, The Legend of the Christmas Tree, Little Jean, How the Fir Tree Became the Christmas Tree, The Magi in the West and Their Search for The Christ Child, Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe, The Little Shepherd, Babouscka, The Boy with the Box, The Worker in Sandal Wood, The Shepherd Who Didn't Go, Paulina's Christmas, Unto Us a Child Is Born, The Star