About the book: 2012 / Christmas time is an amazing period of time: one year comes to replace another, and it seems that everything is possible. This unusual holiday atmosphere instills faith in the possibility of a miracle. Yuletide stories have always been popular with readers, and the most famous authors have also turned to them. The collection contains stories and stories by Russian writers of the 19th–20th centuries. - A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, V. I. Dahl, D. V. Grigorovich, A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin, V. V. Nabokov and others, united by the theme of Christmastide. N. S. Leskov gave one of the most famous definitions of a Yuletide story: it “is certainly required that it be timed to coincide with the events of the Yuletide evening - from Christmas to Epiphany, that it be somewhat fantastic, have some kind of morality, at least like refutation of a harmful prejudice, and finally - so that it certainly ends cheerfully... it must be a true incident! And at the same time, the “variegation” of the plot and philosophical content of Yuletide stories indicates the absence of strict canons: the works included in this publication demonstrate the diversity of author’s approaches to Yuletide themes.