Merry Christmas from Fanny Butcher

Every year when the air has that peculiarly yeasty feel in it, when everywhere one looks there is the brilliance of the evergreen - like the rainbow, a promise a reminder that the old earth goes about its affairs in its own way, stripping leaves off to make an etched tree against a winter sky and leaving needles on to make a picture of trunks bundled warm in furs, when everyone but the Old Scrooges - even the tired shop folk and the tired mailmen - goes about patting life and mankind on the back because Christmas comes but once a year - every time I hear the singsong of the newsboys with that refrain, quite unconsciously I think of one little story, a simple tale of a roomful of school children of all nationalities and of their eager gifts for teacher.

"A Christmas Present for a Lady" it is called. It was written I know not how many years ago by Myra Kelly (1876-1910) who has long been absent from her east side schoolroom and who has probably been forgotten, even by those who loved her tales. But it told so sweet so pathetic a tale of love that I shall never forget it. The Christmas present for the lady was the present little Morris' father had given little Morris' mother, a present that had brought tears and caresses - "a receipt for a month's rent in a Monroe street tenement." The poignancy of that little tale comes back year after year. It is, in a sense, a symbol of a Christmas longing and of a Christmas fulfillment. If Christmas is anything it is a time of understandings, of nearness of spirit, a time when each one gives as his present to life the thing that is his to give... A happy Christmas to you all!

Fanny Butcher
Chicago Tribune
December 24, 1922




NOTE: Myra Kelly {born in Dublin, Ireland, spent two years as a public school teacher in the East Side of New York—a region inhabited chiefly by Russian Jews. The stories she brought home of her experiences with the children and their parents were so full of humor and character that certain of her friends persuaded her to write one down and send it to some periodical. "McClure's" was the fortunate magazine to secure this contribution, which proved to be the first of a series of stories that, though varying in style from the purely humorous to the romantic and pathetic, possess the common flavor of the author's individuality. The present selection ripples down the limited gamut of the emotions of the poor, from the high notes of sheer joy to tones of love made tender by pathetic penury. Miss Kelly was married Allan Macnaughton. (From Short Story Classics by William Patten, 1905)