May Your Days Be Merry and Bright: Christmas Stories by Women

by Susan Koppelman (editor)

From Louisa May Alcott and Willa Cather, to Grace Paley and Ntozake Shange, this unique collection of Christmas stories spans over 100 years -- and includes some of the best short fiction ever written by American women.

Genres: Short Stories, Christmas, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Susan H. Koppelman (b. 1940) is a feminist literary historian and anthologist. The PCA/ACA's Susan Koppelman Award for Feminist Studies in Popular and American Culture is given in her honor.

Reviews

[Tisha (IG: Bluestocking629) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 Christmas Stars

Like most collections of short stories there are stories I loved, stories I liked and stories I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a candy cane.

My particular favorites were:

~ Louisa May Alcott (I believe I have read this Little Women excerpt the last several years, I highly doubt I will ever tire of it).

~ Sarah Orne Jewett - this to me was the female Scrooge. Did I mind? Nope!

~ Mary E Wilkins - you know the Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year and that one line: “...there’ll be scary ghost stories...” ? Well, this story may be one of them!! It’s described as eerie. Absolutely fabulous!

~ Pearl S. Buck - wow! What a terrific read! Multi-layered like a full length novel. I would have loved to seen this one 300 pages longer!

I highly recommend this collection of Christmas short stories!

[Angie Fehl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of these are snippets pulled from famous authors' larger works (novels or short story collections), packaged together to reflect a Christmas theme. The majority of the stories were just so-so for me or I was already familiar with them from the original text (as with the Christmas conversation from Alcott's Little Women). The ones that peaked my interest the most were the selections from Pearl S. Buck and Alice Childress. Will look into finding the original books their pieces came from.

[Olivia Eaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun short story collection. I don't always read seasonally but one thing I like to do is read Christmas stories. This collection has some old favorites and introduced me to some new to me authors I'd like to explore more.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serious and thoughtful type of Christmas book, I have read it before but it’s been a while. Most stories very nice but skimmed a couple of them.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has Christmas short stories by many women authors, some such as Pearl Buck and Edna Ferber well-known. Many of the stories, especially the 19th century ones are a little too sentimental for modern tastes, but an interesting one is Merry Christmas, Marge, by Alice Childress, written in the 50's. The narrator is a black woman, lamenting that there won't be "peace on earth" until her children can to school with white children, until she can rent any apartment she can afford and until some cities have black mayors. I think we have progressed, maybe not enough, but there is progress.

[Janell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a series of short stories. Most of them were written in the late 1800's to early 1900's and certainly reflect the style of writing that was popular at the time. Some of the stories probably rated more stars while others rated less.

[Alexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zona Gale was best story "Not as the world givith". I'd like to read more of hers.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good collection of Christmas stories. A few are better than others but for the most part I enjoyed all the stories.