Christmas Every Day and Other Stories
The title story of this 1892 collection begins with a simple question from a little girl: why can't Christmas be every day? Her father, pressed for a story, invents a fairy who grants exactly that wish. At first, the girl revels in perpetual presents, endless turkey, and ceaseless merriment. But by the hundredth Christmas, joy has curdled into something exhausting. The decorations sag, the relatives never leave, and the girl realizes that a thing as precious as Christmas depends precisely on its rarity. Howells writes with gentle satire and genuine warmth, exposing the hollowness of limitless indulgence while never losing sight of a child's sincere desire for wonder. The other stories in the collection share this double edge: they're funny about the absurdities of late-Victorian American life, but they're also genuinely interested in what makes people happy, lonely, or kind.
