Christmas stories worth finding
Named poems and stories, each with its author, its age range and how long it takes to read aloud, so you can find one worth your time before you start.
Read our bedtime stories about Santa Claus Read where Santa Claus came fromPublic-domain Santa Claus texts, compared
Each of these texts is in the public domain, so the full text can be read free and legally tonight. The age range and read-aloud time are estimates to help you judge whether a particular text suits the child in front of you.
| Text | Age range | Read-aloud time | Where to find |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Visit from St. Nicholas (1823)The poem that fixed sleigh, reindeer and chimney into one picture. Whether Clement Clarke Moore actually wrote it is still disputed. | 3 to 8 | About 5 minutes | Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive |
| Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (1897)An editorial, written in answer to one child's letter to a newspaper. Stands well as a short piece on its own. | 7 and up, including adults | About 3 minutes | Widely reprinted online and archived by the Library of Congress |
| The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902), L. Frank BaumA full-length origin story, longer and stranger than the poem, built around a mythology of immortals and fairies raising a foundling child. | 8 to 12, read over several nights | 20 to 30 minutes a chapter | Project Gutenberg |
| A Kidnapped Santa Claus (1904), L. Frank BaumA shorter, self-contained Baum story that suits a single sitting. | 5 to 9 | About 15 minutes | Project Gutenberg, in collected editions of Baum's short stories |
This list covers the American Santa Claus tradition. For stories and poems in the British Father Christmas tradition, fatherchristmas.uk covers that ground in detail. Age ranges and reading times here are estimates for planning a read-aloud, not measurements taken from any particular reading.
Notes on the texts
Every story and poem in this collection is chosen for two things: it can be read in full without payment or subscription, and it belongs to the world this site draws from, the nineteenth-century American tradition that fixed the modern picture of Santa Claus. That second condition rules out a good deal of what gets called a classic Christmas story. Some well-loved twentieth-century tales are still under copyright and are not reproduced or linked here for that reason; others introduce characters or details from commercial works that sit outside the public-domain tradition. What is left is smaller but freely readable, and each entry below tells you what it is before you commit an evening to it.
What being free to read actually means
A text enters the public domain when its copyright term ends, after which anyone can read, reprint or quote it without permission or a fee. Most of the poems and stories here were written in the 1800s or early 1900s, so that has already happened. It is not a judgement on quality; it simply means the door is open, and it is why you will find archive and library links rather than shop links throughout this page.
Older language, read aloud
Texts from this period were not written for children reading silently to themselves. Sentences run longer, some words have fallen out of everyday use, and a poem written for a magazine audience in 1823 assumes an adult reader will be doing the reading. None of that is a problem for reading aloud tonight, but it helps to glance through a piece first, so you know where you might pause to explain a phrase. Reading Aloud Well goes into this in more detail if you read to children often.
Using the age guidance
The age range given with each text is a starting point. It reflects the length of the piece, the density of its language and how much a listener needs to follow to enjoy it. A five-year-old who has heard plenty of stories read to them will often sit happily through something pitched a year or two above them, because the pictures in their head do most of the work.
Where this fits alongside the rest of the site
This page sits next to the site's own stories. If you want something written specifically for reading aloud tonight, with the read-aloud time and age range stated up front, the stories section is the more direct route. This page is for when you have already read those and want to go further, into the older texts that started the tradition. The British side of the story, Father Christmas rather than Santa Claus, is covered in its own collection at fatherchristmas.uk rather than here.
The British tradition
The stories and poems gathered on this page sit inside one particular branch of the Christmas tradition: the American one, running from Sinterklaas through the poem that fixed the modern picture in 1823 to the illustrators who gave that figure his sleigh, his workshop and his red coat. Britain has a separate figure, Father Christmas, older than that and rooted in different customs, carols and plays.
Where the British stories are kept
fatherchristmas.uk covers that British tradition in detail: the medieval origins of Father Christmas, how he came to merge with the American Santa Claus over the twentieth century, and the stories and customs that are distinctly British.
If you want the traceable history behind the figure this site follows, where Santa Claus came from sets it out with names and dates. For stories to read aloud tonight, bedtime stories about Santa Claus is the place to start.