Your Monday mote

& other Christmas stories

There’s a Christmas memory that lives in a deep wintery crevice of my mind, of mum and I watching a TV adaptation of The Little Match Girl.

I’m around six-years-old and we’re sitting on the sofa crying our eyes out. I think at some point, my dad returns to the house with my younger brother and as soon as they see us sobbing, they run for the hills.

The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen, is an incredibly melancholic literary fairy tale about an impoverished young girl who is sent out onto the street in the middle of a harsh winter, by her abusive father, to sell matches.

She isn’t wearing a coat or hat, her clothes are rags and her feet are bare. She’s scared to go home because she hasn’t made any money, so in order to stay warm she strikes the matches against the wall.

In their orange glow, as the crowds walk by seemingly oblivious to her plight, she hallucinates a series of comforting visions, including a warm fire and a Christmas feast.

As the flames go out, the visions fade so she continues to strike the matches and in one of the flickers, sees her late grandmother, the one person in her life who showed her any love and kindness.

“She rubbed another match against the wall. It became bright again, and in the glow the old grandmother stood clear and shining, kind and lovely” - The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Anderson

This makes her happy, so she lights all the matches in an attempt to keep the vision of her grandma alive.

In the morning, the neglected child is found frozen to death, the spent matches scattered around her, but still smiling at the vision of her grandma, who came to take her to heaven.

In 1845, when Anderson wrote the tale, it was illegal to beg on the streets of Denmark, so families got around this by selling matches. The moral, that we must be kind to people who are less fortunate than ourselves, is clear.

The story was meant to highlight the pressing social issues of the day but it seems so prescient. In 2024, with the need for food banks increasing and people struggling to pay their bills, the message of this story still sadly endures.

I tracked down the version I saw, which I think was a 25 minute adaptation for ATV, written by Jeremy Paul, a prolific TV writer (Lovejoy, Campion, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Hetty Wainthrop Investigates). A notable detail about the production is that it was Sarah Jessica Parker’s acting debut; she didn’t play the little match girl though, that was Lynsey Baxter, who went on to appear in The French Lieutenant’s Woman and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

A well-crafted children’s story can stay with you forever. That 1974 version is no longer available (at least, I can’t find it anywhere) but Paul was called upon to rework it for a 1986 musical adaptation, which starred The Who’s Roger Daltrey, and there was also a Disney animation.

I don’t need to see it again to be reminded of the pain I felt for that little girl but that doesn’t mean I have stopped reading Christmas stories.

Sometimes, as an adult, it’s so hard to hold on to who we were as children. The older you get, the harder you have to work to conjure up those memories or even specific details. However, the stories that swirl around at Christmastime, somehow have the power to bring those distant times back into sharper focus.

The Little Match Girl puts me squarely on our seventies sofa, in a living room that had a shag-pile carpet, rotary phone and a fully stocked bar made out of pine, that was bedecked with a soda siphon and pineapple shaped ice bucket.

There’s always room for new stories though and yesterday, I was delighted to receive an advance copy of Kurt Magenta’s festive tale, The Frost Prize, which is now available on Amazon.

It’s a beautiful - and thrilling - tale of 14-year-old Alix, who enters a world-famous sleigh racing competition, and overcomes many obstacles but never forgets that kindness is also a super power.

You can buy it here for the super bargainous price of 78p (less than €1 or $1), and for every copy sold, the author Kurt, aka Mark Tungate, will make a donation to the charity, Save The Children.

Mark is a fantastic writer, who has been publishing Christmas stories full of wit and wonderment for his son for more than a decade now. So, if you like The Frost Prize, there’s an entire back catalogue to wade through, and I suggest you do just that.

Tell me, what Christmas stories mean something to you?

Lisa