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5 best short stories about the holidays

Here are some of the very best stories about one of the most magical times of the year.

5. 'A Christmas Story,' by Jean Shepherd

  • By Danny Heitman Contributor

Everybody already knows about the movie version “A Christmas Story,” drawn from the late Jean Shepherd’s account of his boyhood quest to find a Red Ryder B.B. gun under the holiday tree. The movie, a staple of cable television each December, marks its 30th anniversary this year. I screen it at least once each Christmas season, but I also treat myself to a rereading of the Shepherd tale that inspired it. The story is a giddy joy from start to finish. “I imagined innumerable situations calling for the instant and irrevocable need for a BB gun,” Shepherd tells readers, “great fantasies where I fended off creeping marauders burrowing through the snow toward the kitchen, where only I and I alone stood between our tiny huddled family and insensate Evil.”

One of the happiest affirmations of our national good sense is the presence of “A Christmas Story” as a holiday classic, both as a film and as a book that’s still in print.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

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