Christmas stories

Winter classics to read at the end of a December day: the Nutcracker wakes at midnight, the fir tree leaves the wood, the match girl waits in the cold.

Christmas is not the backdrop in these tales, it is what turns them. The fir tree gets its wish and leaves the wood, the Nutcracker comes alive at midnight, and the little match girl is out in the street on the last night of the year.

Nearly all of them rest on one picture: frost outside, a lit window, and someone looking in or out of it. The tin soldier falls from such a window, and it is past Kai’s that the Snow Queen drives by.

The endings are what surprise people about Andersen. Neither the match girl nor the tin soldier gets home, so it is worth knowing that before you start reading aloud. The Star Money is the gentlest of them, The Snow Queen the longest, and that one runs to several evenings.