A Merry Christmas collects the treasured holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott, from the dearly familiar Yuletide benevolence of Marmee and her “little women” to the timeless “What Love Can Do,” wherein the residents of a boarding house come together to make a lovely Christmas for two poor girls. Wildly popular at the time of their publication—readers deluged Alcott with letters demanding sequels—and drawing on Alcott’s family and experiences in the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, these stories have the authentic texture and detail of Christmas in nineteenth-century America, while their emphasis on generosity and charity make them timeless embodiments of the Christmas spirit.

The Christmas stories of the famous authors: Gilbert Keith Chesterton - A Christmas Carol, Lucy Maud Montgomery - A Christmas Inspiration, A Christmas Mistake, Christmas at Red Butte, Lyman Frank Baum -A Kidnapped Santa Claus, Mark Twain - A Letter from Santa Claus, Louisa May Alcott - A Merry Christmas, Leo Tolstoy - A Russian Christmas Party, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Christmas Bells, Nikolai Gogol - Christmas Eve, William Dean Howells - Christmas Everyday, Joseph Rudyard Kipling - Christmas in India, Lyman Frank Baum - Little Bun Rabbit, Elizabeth Harrison - Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe, John Milton - On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Charles Dickens - The Chimes, Nathaniel Hawthorne -The Christmas Banquet, Hans Christian Andersen - The Fir Tree, Selma Lagerlöf - The Holy Night, Hans Christian Andersen - The Little Match Girl, Clement Moore - The Night Before Christmas, Henry van Dyke - The Other Wise Man, William Dean Howells - The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, Beatrix Potter - The Tailor of Gloucester, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Three Kings, Anton Chehov - Vanka.

• Narrator: Trevor O'Hare
• Listening Length: 20 minutes 35 seconds