Bret Harte 
How Santa Claus Came to Simpson’s Bar 

Originally published in Harte’s 1875 short-story collection The Tales of the Argonauts, “How Santa Claus Came to Simpson’s Bar” is set in California in the early 1860s and, like the rest of the tales in that collection, features the gold-seeking Argonauts. In this tale, like many of Harte’s others, the folly and grit of human existence balance any good intentions, good cheer, or hope, resulting in a more complicated and somewhat bleak ending than is commonly found in most Christmas tales.

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Francis Bret Harte (1836–1902) was an American short-story writer, poet, and humorist. Best remembered for his stories fiction stories concerning the California Gold Rush, featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures. He helped create the American local-colour writing style, which attempted to better represent the particularities of a place and its inhabitants through elements such as dialect, landscape, and folklore. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction.