Phebe A. Curtiss 
Christmas Stories And Legends 

Christmas Stories and Legends is a collection of tales to restore ’the real spirit of Christmas’ to the jaded world of . . . 1916. Even then, 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. Children might have had visions of sugarplums, but the book includes the unsweetened versions of two weepers from Hans Christian Anderson: ’The Little Match Girl’ and ’The Fir Tree.’ (The tree learns too late to appreciate Christmas — on the bonfire afterward.) And little Tom has to learn he is lucky to receive new skates for Christmas, even if they’re the wrong brand. The book brings back great-grandfather’s Christmas as a gift for today’s worriers. Christmas always came with problems. But it always came, anyway.



Table of Contents



FOREWORD



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



LITTLE GRETCHEN AND THE WOODEN SHOE



THE LITTLE SHEPHERD



BABOUSCKA



THE BOY WITH THE BOX



THE WORKER IN SANDALWOOD



THE SHEPHERD WHO DIDN’T GO



PAULINA’S CHRISTMAS



UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN



THE STAR