A family Christmas

We need a little Christmas / Jerry Herman

Letter to Santa, & Introduction / Caroline Kennedy

The gracious time (from Hamlet) / William Shakespeare

Psalm 8

Credo / Edwin Arlington Robinson

Letter to Fred Allen / Groucho Marx

Relative pronouns / E. B. White

Keeping Christmas / Henry van Dyke

White Christmas / Irving Berlin

Deck the halls (Welsh traditional carol)

Under the mistletoe / Countee Cullen

Messiah (Christmas portions) / Mark Doty

Little tree / E. E. Cummings

The Christmas tree / Emma Lazarus

Christmas trees: a Christmas circular letter / Robert Frost

A Christmas tree / Piri Thomas

Christmas party at the South Danbury Church / Donald Hall

The loudest voice / Grace Paley

Peace and goodwill to managers / George Bernard Shaw

The old scout: the season of letter-perfect families / Garrison Keillor

The computer's first Christmas card / Edwin Morgan

Lunch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984)

The holly and the ivy (English traditional carol)

Santa Claus is comin' to town / Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots

A visit from St. Nicholas / Clement Clarke Moore

Is there a Santa Claus? ("Yes, Virginia") / Francis P. Church

Letter to Michelle Rochon / John F. Kennedy

Letter from Santa Claus / Mark Twain

Santa's stocking / Katharine Lee Bates

Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus (from Little House on the Prairie) / Laura Ingalls Wilder

A Chaparral Christmas gift / O. Henry

Santa Claus / Sonny Boy Williamson

Saint Nicholas / Marianne Moore

Saint Nicholas (from The Christmas encyclopedia) / William D. Crump

Six to eight black men / David Sedaris

Santaland 2006 (from Santa guide for the Macy's Santa)

Children of the world v. Santa Claus / Andrew J. McClurg

The deadweight loss of Christmas (from American Economic Review) / Joel Waldfogel

NORAD Tracks Santa (online tracking; also send Santa an email) / www .noradsanta .org

Father Christmas executed / Claude Levi-Strauss

Christmas in Hollis / Run-D.M.C.

Away in a manger / William James Kirkpatrick

Isaiah 9:2-6

Luke 2: 1-20

Pedida da la posada : asking for lodging

The stable / Gabriela Mistral

The barn / Elizabeth Coatsworth

Presepio / Joseph Brodsky

The puppy who wanted a boy / Jane Thayer

Christmas superstitions (from Christmas in the mountains) / Hubert J. Davis

Christmas Eve, Nochebuena / Cesar Vallejo

Carol of the birds, El cant dels ocells (Old Spanish carol from Catalonia)

Silent Night / Joseph Mohr & Franz Gruber

Joy to the world / Isaac Watts & G. F. Handel

Christmas sparrow / Billy Collins

Christmas Day in the morning / Pearl S. Buck

Christmas Day at sea / Joseph Conrad

Christmas / Vladimir Nabokov

A Christmas memory / Truman Capote

Blond / Natasha Trethewey

All I want for Christmas is you / Mariah Carey & Walter Afanasieff

Hark! The herald angels sing / Charles Wesley, George Whitefield & Martin Madan, and Felix Mendelssohn

Peace / Henry Vaughan

Letter to John Hancock / George Washington

Christmas bells / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Christmas truce, World War I (from The London Times)

Letter to Tommy, World War II / Lt. Col. Ralph Noonan

Telegram to the U.S. Ambassador, Moscow / W. Averell Harriman

A Christmas sermon on peace / Martin Luther King, Jr.

Christmas e-mails from Iraq / Capt. Trent Weston & Sgt. Mike Mira

Happy Xmas (war is over) / John Lennon & Yoko Ono

We wish you a Merry Christmas (Traditional)

All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined (Anonymous English Medieval)

"Amos 'n' Andy" Christmas show fails test of time (from The New York Times) / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Christmas in Qatar / Calvin Trillin

Christmas laughter / Nikki Giovanni

Penalty for keeping Christmas

Grace defended / Cotton Mather

From Martha Washington's kitchen

Incidents in the life of a slave girl / Harriet A. Jacobs

Christmas in the olden time / Sir Walter Scott

The second of the three spirits (from A Christmas carol) / Charles Dickens

Salvation Army's bounty (from the New York Times)

Christmas every day / William Dean Howells

Christmas in the tenements / Theodore Dreiser

Un poquito de tu amor / Sandra Cisneros

Here we come a-wassaling

O come all ye faithful / Frederick Oakeley & William Thomas Brooke and John Francis Wade

Matthew 2:1-12

The oxen / Thomas Hardy

A Christmas carol / Christina Rossetti

Carol of the Brown King / Langston Hughes

Christmas morning / Elizabeth Madox Roberts

The gift of the Magi / O. Henry

The real gifts parents can give to children / Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

Dreams of a black Christmas / Gwendolyn Brooks

Christmas / St. Augustine

The first Nowell

Winter wonderland / Richard B. Smith and Felix Bernard

All's Noël that ends Noël / Ogden Nash

Christ climbed down / Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Remembrance is sufficient / W. H. Auden

Blow, blow, thou winter wind (from As you like it) / William Shakespeare.