The Holy Night

As part of her collection "Christ Legends" Selma Lagerlöf wrote the story "The Holy Night," a Christmas-themed tale first published in sometime in the early 1900s but before her death in 1940. It tells the story of the author at five years old who experienced a great sadness when her grandmother passed which made her recall a story the old woman used to tell about the Holy Night.

The story the grandmother tells is about a poor man who wanders around the village asking people for a single live coal to light his own fire, but keeps getting met with rejection until he runs into a shepherd who finds compassion in his heart to help, especially after seeing the state of the man's home and wife and child.