There's a long tradition of English Christmas stories, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, often revolving around ghosts and apparitions. Dickens drew on it in a serious vein in A Christmas Carol; here Jerome K. Jerome tells hilarious stories from around an English Christmas fireside.
A few selected Christmas poems and stories rounds out the program, including the classic story of the Nativity from the Bible.
"Told After Supper," by Jerome K. Jerome:
This is a wonderful spoof of the grand old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas--a tradition Charles Dickens made fine use of in A Christmas Carol and other stories. Only in Jerome's work, everything goes hilariously wrong, and the narrator of the story even winds up wandering around on the streets drunk as a lord, somewhat incompletely dressed!
"Christmas Trees", by Robert Frost:
In this early poem, we hear Frost's dry, matter-of-fact New England voice making "a simple calculation" about "Christmas trees I didn't know I had."
"Mistletoe", by Walter de la Mare:
A dreamlike experience of a gentle touch from a special person late in the night on Christmas is as fine a piece of dreamland as one could wish.
"Ring Out!", by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
A passionate appeal that the new year may be better than the old.
"The Three Kings", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
The majesty and indeed the worldly wisdom of the three who came to give great gifts to the infant in the manger has never been better expressed.
Luke 2:1-20 (King James version):
In the beautiful language of the King James Bible--the only successful contribution to literature ever made by a committee--we hear not only how a babe was born, but how his mother came to believe great things of him.
A Freshwater Seas production.
