The Star – An Original Short, Short Christmas Story by Don McDonald

Uncle Richard's New Year Dinner – A Classic Short Story by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Uncle Richard’s New Year Dinner is a tender, early-20th-century family story about estrangement, reconciliation, and the quiet power of kindness. Set over the course of a single winter evening, it explores how long-standing rifts are rarely healed by grand speeches—but sometimes by a warm stove, a shared table, and a willingness to begin again. It’s a story of kindness, humanity, and hope that arrives without ceremony. Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) was a Canadian author best known for her enduring novel Anne of Green Gables. Writing with warmth, wit, and deep emotional intelligence, Montgomery captured the inner lives of ordinary people and the quiet dramas of home, family, and belonging. Her stories often found beauty in small moments and believed—without sentimentality—that kindness, imagination, and patience could heal even long-held wounds. Though her work is rooted in a specific place and time, its emotional truths remain timeless. If you love short stories, explore our multiverse of timeless tales at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com] Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses [shortstoryverses.com] Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com]. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The Boy with the Box – A Classic Christmas Story by Mary Griggs Van Voorhis

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. If you enjoyed this story, please check out the rest the Season's Reading catalog of holiday tales. You can also find a multiverse of classic and original short stories of various genres at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com] Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses [shortstoryverses.com] Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com]. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The Star – An Original Short, Short Christmas Story by Don McDonald

This is a special Christmas bonus episode for Season's Readings listeners. Frank has reasons for not decorating anymore. Christmas is quieter now. Darker. Easier to ignore. Then a new neighbor moves in next door—six years old, endlessly curious. What starts as a simple conversation turns into a small act of defiance against grief, routine, and the belief that some lights, once turned off, should stay that way. The Star is a gentle story about unexpected persuasion, borrowed wonder, and how the smallest voices sometimes know exactly where the switch is. If you enjoy short stories, there are dozens more just waiting to be heard on the Short Storyverses channel or at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.vom] Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses [shortstoryverses.com] Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com]. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

On Christmas Day in the Morning – A Classic Christmas Story by Grace S. Richmond

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) Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses [shortstoryverses.com] Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com]. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The Santaverse – An Original Christmas Story by Don McDonald

BE AWARE: This is a family-friendly work of speculative fiction that asks: what if Santa Claus were something far stranger, and more wonderful, than we ever imagined? THose looking for a traditional Santa story may be disappointed. In Santaverse, a brilliant researcher completes a quantum experiment that opens a door she never meant to find. What begins as a scientific breakthrough quickly turns into something stranger—and far more personal. On the other side of the connection is a presence that shouldn’t exist, a figure woven from equal parts myth, memory, and physics. And once contact is made, nothing in her world—or any world—stays simple. Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses [shortstoryverses.com] Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com [shortstoryverses.com]. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.