<p><em>On Christmas Day in the Morning</em>&nbsp;is a story about family—not as it is imagined, but as it is lived—and the gifts that arrive without wrapping. It was written with music already echoing between its lines. The traditional song of the same name appears directly in the story, assumed to be familiar to its original readers.</p><br><p>For this performance, the music is included not as embellishment, but as part of the text itself— the way it may have lived in the reader’s mind when the story was first published.</p><br><p><strong>Grace S. Richmond (1866–1959)</strong>&nbsp;was an American novelist and short-story writer whose work focused on family life, personal responsibility, and the quiet moral decisions that shape ordinary people.</p><br><p>A frequent contributor to publications such as&nbsp;<em>The Ladies’ Home Journal</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>The Saturday Evening Post</em>, Richmond was widely read in the early 20th century. Her Christmas stories, in particular, favored restraint over sentimentality—using the holiday as a setting for reflection, reconciliation, and emotional truth.</p><br><p>Her fiction was written to be shared, remembered, and reread—often aloud, and often at Christmas.</p><br><p><em>“I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In)” Traditional English carol</em></p><p><em>Performed by Matt Norris &amp; the Moon</em></p><p><em>Audio sourced from Wikimedia Commons</em></p><p><em>Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC BY 3.0)</em></p><p><strong><em>Season’s Readings</em></strong> is just one corner of the <a href="shortstoryverses.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Short Storyverses</a> Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at <a href="shortstoryverses.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shortstoryverses.com</a>.</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>