The Boy with the Box – A Classic Christmas Story by Mary Griggs Van Voorhis
Season's Readings – Christmas Stories and Holiday TalesShow Notes
First published in 1905, “The Boy with the Box” is a gentle Christmas story about childhood pride, unexpected generosity, and the quiet ways kindness reshapes a heart. It captures a winter world of skates and shop windows, family love and small sacrifices—where the true gift arrives not in a box, but in understanding.
Mary Griggs Van Voorhis (1876–1938) was an American writer whose short stories often focused on children, family life, and moments of quiet moral awakening. Writing in the early twentieth century, she was known for her warm realism and her ability to find emotional truth in everyday scenes. Her work appeared widely in magazines of the era and remains admired for its gentle humanity and timeless perspective.
If you enjoyed this story, please check out the rest the Season's Reading catalog of holiday tales. You can also find a multiverse of classic and original short stories of various genres at shortstoryverses.com Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Season's Readings – Christmas Stories and Holiday Tales
Uncle Richard’s New Year Dinner is a tender, early-20th-century family story about estrangement, reconciliation, and the quiet power of kindness. Set over the course of a single winter evening, it explores how long-standing rifts are rarely healed by grand speeches—but sometimes by a warm stove, a shared table, and a willingness to begin again. It’s a story of kindness, humanity, and hope that arrives without ceremony.
This is a special Christmas bonus episode for Season's Readings listeners.
On Christmas Day in the Morning 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.
BE AWARE: This is a family-friendly work of speculative fiction that asks: what if Santa Claus were something far stranger, and more wonderful, than we ever imagined? THose looking for a traditional Santa story may be disappointed.
Season’s Readings is just one corner of the Short Storyverses Multiverse, created for anyone who enjoys a thoughtful pause and a well-told tale. You can explore the rest of the multiverse at shortstoryverses.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.