Christmas Every Day
by W. D. Howells
A papa tells his little girl about another little girl who asks the Christmas
Fairy to make it Christmas every day. She gets her wish, but is it time travel? Probably
not in this case since they all continue to live through the year with December 26 being
Christmas and Dec 27 being Christmas and December 28 being Christmas. .
. And yet, we include it in the ITTDB simple because Howells’ story was
the departure point for endless repeating-holiday stories in future years.
— Michael Main
After a while turkeys got to be awfully scarce, selling for about a thousand dollars
apiece. They got to passing off almost anything for turkeys—even half-grown
hummingbirds. And cranberries—well they asked a diamond apiece for cranberries. All the
woods and orchards were cut down for Christmas trees. After a while they had to make
Christmas trees out of rags. But there were plenty of rags, because people got so poor,
buying presents for one another, that they couldn't get any new clothes, and they just
wore their old ones to tatters. They got so poor that everybody had to go to the
poorhouse, except the confectioners, and the storekeepers, and the book-sellers, and they
all got so rich and proud that they would hardly wait upon a person when he came to buy.
It was perfectly shameful!
“Christmas Every Day” by W. D. Howells, in Christmas
Every Day and Other Stories Told for Children (Harper Brothers, 1892).