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How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar
How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar, is universally conceded to rank among Bret Harte's best tales.
36 pages, Paperback
Published March 26, 2016
1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Bret Harte
3,119 books63 followersPeople note American writer Francis Bret Harte for
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches
(1870), his best-known collection of his stories about California mining towns.
People best remember this poet for his short-story fiction, featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the Gold Rush. In a career, spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern United States to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but people most often reprinted, adapted, and admired his tales of the Gold Rush.
Parents named him after Francis Brett, his great-grandfather. Bernard Hart, paternal grandfather of Francis and an Orthodox Jewish immigrant, flourished as a merchant and founded the New York stock exchange. Henry, father of the young Francis, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Later, Francis preferred that people know his middle name, which he spelled Bret with only one t.
An avid reader as a boy, Harte at 11 years of age published his first work, a satirical poem, titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend, "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse". His formal schooling ended at 13 years of age in 1849.
People best remember this poet for his short-story fiction, featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the Gold Rush. In a career, spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern United States to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but people most often reprinted, adapted, and admired his tales of the Gold Rush.
Parents named him after Francis Brett, his great-grandfather. Bernard Hart, paternal grandfather of Francis and an Orthodox Jewish immigrant, flourished as a merchant and founded the New York stock exchange. Henry, father of the young Francis, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Later, Francis preferred that people know his middle name, which he spelled Bret with only one t.
An avid reader as a boy, Harte at 11 years of age published his first work, a satirical poem, titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend, "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse". His formal schooling ended at 13 years of age in 1849.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 22, 2018
It’s been way too many years since I first read this book to even know which decade it had been. Perhaps it was in the 50s or maybe in the very early 60s. But this book came to mind this year as I was wondering what western I had read that was about Christmas. At first all I could remember was the author’s first name, Bret, and finally I remembered, Harte. This is not a name easily forgotten. I found this book on kindle for next to nothing. Gutenberg also has his books, and while his name was somewhat easy to remember, his books have gone out of print, and you can’t find a review of it on Amazon or on Goodreads, that is, not until now.
Simpson’s Bar.
The rains and floods came to Sacramento Valley, and the men were hanging out at Simpson Bar. Supplies couldn’t get through, so they had run out of food, but more importantly, they were out of whiskey, and it was Christmas Eve. In walked The Old Man, as he was called. Not Hank for Joe, just The Old Man. He invited them all to his cabin. They obliged, for there they had whiskey, crackers, cheese, and whatever else he had to offer them.
The Old Man’s young boy Johnny was sick with fever. He would not have a Christmas without gifts. Dick, one of the men from the bar, decided to take a horse into town on this treacherous night. And the story goes on.
Note: Bret Harte. American short story writer and poet. Born in 1839 and died in 1902. Best known, if he is known now at all, for his pioneer stories set in California.
Simpson’s Bar.
The rains and floods came to Sacramento Valley, and the men were hanging out at Simpson Bar. Supplies couldn’t get through, so they had run out of food, but more importantly, they were out of whiskey, and it was Christmas Eve. In walked The Old Man, as he was called. Not Hank for Joe, just The Old Man. He invited them all to his cabin. They obliged, for there they had whiskey, crackers, cheese, and whatever else he had to offer them.
The Old Man’s young boy Johnny was sick with fever. He would not have a Christmas without gifts. Dick, one of the men from the bar, decided to take a horse into town on this treacherous night. And the story goes on.
Note: Bret Harte. American short story writer and poet. Born in 1839 and died in 1902. Best known, if he is known now at all, for his pioneer stories set in California.
December 4, 2021
A story of Christmas sacrifice, sweetly told in the rough voice of the West. Bret Harte is a master at capturing the feeling of an old west mining town and its inhabitants.
February 4, 2024
Are Christmas stories only to be read in season? (Asking for a friend)
Here a sick boy, isolated in Simpson's Bar, further isolated by a flood "as large as the State of Massachusetts", mentions he has heard a tale about a man named Sandy Claws. It’s Christmas Eve and the boy asks his father: "Wot's Chrismiss, anyway? Wot's it all about?"
"Oh, it's a day."
This exhaustive explanation was apparently satisfactory, [because silence ensued].
Suitably sentimental, slightly outrageous, pleasingly satirical, generous in mocking, rich in description of characters and set in the mining camps of Gold Rush California, 1862, this piece from Outcasts of Poker Flat is good enough to enjoy in early February, while snow-bound in a raging blizzard and only modestly deranged from cabin fever.
Bret Harte honed his craft writing "parodies of current fiction" and this tone permeates what I have read of his own work.
Here a sick boy, isolated in Simpson's Bar, further isolated by a flood "as large as the State of Massachusetts", mentions he has heard a tale about a man named Sandy Claws. It’s Christmas Eve and the boy asks his father: "Wot's Chrismiss, anyway? Wot's it all about?"
"Oh, it's a day."
This exhaustive explanation was apparently satisfactory, [because silence ensued].
Suitably sentimental, slightly outrageous, pleasingly satirical, generous in mocking, rich in description of characters and set in the mining camps of Gold Rush California, 1862, this piece from Outcasts of Poker Flat is good enough to enjoy in early February, while snow-bound in a raging blizzard and only modestly deranged from cabin fever.
Bret Harte honed his craft writing "parodies of current fiction" and this tone permeates what I have read of his own work.
June 7, 2020
Simpson's Bar is (I think) a small town. The men are getting together at a friend's house on Christmas Eve. The small boy is at home and not feeling well. He also does not know a Christmas. The men decide to give the boy a Christmas.
December 2, 2021
This is the story of a father who braves the world to bring a gift to his sleeping son. It is beautiful work.
December 4, 2024
A hardscrabble yet beautiful Christmas story about the forms Santa Claus takes, and the labors of love necessary to conjure him up.
December 23, 2024
Dag 23 i min julnovellkalender.
Börjar lite lagom sunkig, men förvandlas snart till en berättelse med oväntad kämparglöd.
Börjar lite lagom sunkig, men förvandlas snart till en berättelse med oväntad kämparglöd.
December 4, 2025
Could have been readable is not for the cowboyisms/ cowboy speak
September 30, 2024
🖍️ This was a quick, fun, and hilarious story to read. I found How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar By Bret Harte Annotated. in Mrs. Skagg's Husbands and Other Stories, a collection of short stories via Project Gutenberg.
📙Published in ???.
*•̩̩͙ *How I came across this book: Looking for Christmas-themed books to read.
જ⁀➴🟢The e-book version can be found at Project Gutenberg.
✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎
📙Published in ???.
*•̩̩͙ *How I came across this book: Looking for Christmas-themed books to read.
જ⁀➴🟢The e-book version can be found at Project Gutenberg.
✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎
April 4, 2022
Se vi aspettate un Twain, Melville, Hawthorne avete sbagliato strada. In effetti se andate sulla pagina letteratura americana di wikipedia (anche nella versione inglese), Brett Harte non viene neppure menzionato.
Questo premesso, il libro contiene una selezione degli innumerevoli racconti scritti da Harte nella sua vita (in verità molti dopo il successo iniziale), qui centrati sulla vita di frontiera in California. Di questi il migliore come realismo e pathos è quello usato come titolo del libro e "i reietti di Poker Flat".
Non credo che ricorderò a lungo questo libro
Questo premesso, il libro contiene una selezione degli innumerevoli racconti scritti da Harte nella sua vita (in verità molti dopo il successo iniziale), qui centrati sulla vita di frontiera in California. Di questi il migliore come realismo e pathos è quello usato come titolo del libro e "i reietti di Poker Flat".
Non credo che ricorderò a lungo questo libro
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews