| “My girl thought I was crazy, but I didn’t mind. It was the first time I had laughed in weeks,” Joseph Mitchell writes in “Christmas Story,” published in The New Yorker in 1938. Five years earlier, Mitchell’s editors at a newspaper had told him, in the weeks before the holiday, to find “stories about human misery”—not a difficult task at the time. The Depression was in full swing, and New York City teemed with hunger and poverty. Days into his reporting, Mitchell encountered James and Elizabeth Hollinan, an unemployed carpenter and hotel maid who had lost their home and been living, for a year, in a cave in Central Park. Mitchell published their story, and happily—or so he thought—money and job offers for the couple flooded in. When he returned to deliver the cash, the Hollinans’ response shocked onlookers, but brought Mitchell a surprise dose of Yuletide cheer. Like many New Yorker stories about Christmas, Mitchell’s essay is moving without being maudlin, and too layered to easily categorize. Eighty-four years after it was published, it still makes for a captivating read. Wherever you find yourself this holiday, we wish you and your loved ones health, happiness, and a few moments of peace and quiet to enjoy this collection. | 
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