Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of holiday short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

2760+ Holiday Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Whether you’re looking for a wintery cup of cheer or a ray of sunshine during a summertime festival, our holiday short stories will have you feeling the spirit in no time.

Holiday Short Stories – Page 170 of 185

A Rough Start to the New Year

Submitted to Contest #22

We fell in love on December tenth two years ago Allison. What has happened between now and then? Right now you’re tied up to a chair. You’re screaming in my head about how I am the sick man who ruined your life. How I was the one who pushed you to murder our unborn child without you even telling me it existed.   You say that I stalked you in that last argument, that I was wrong for breaking into your house multiple times to install cameras that you were never supposed to find out about, by the way. You blame me for your boyfriend m...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Heroine and Heroin

Submitted to Contest #22

A man hunched over in the darkness, balancing his hand on a park bench to keep from falling over as he vomited. His outline glowed under the pale street light, he was so skinny. He wiped off his mouth and took a swig of whatever was in his flask to wash down the taste. I stood a few yards behind him and refastened my gloves. The wind was cold and ruthless and broke through my skin in little bursts through the tiny hole in the back of my jacket. That’s what I get for buying a jacket from a thrift store. I wondered if he was cold… It was New Y...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

My Brother's Gut Is Never Wrong

Submitted to Contest #21

      I stared at all the people. All I wanted was to go home. It was Christmas Eve for goodness sakes! Mom was busy though, and Dad was too. And Mom wouldn’t let me stay home alone. She said it was too ‘dangerous.’ Wow, Mom. Way to put your trust in me.       Mom was ignoring me, as usual, but still I had to sit here while she worked endlessly. I didn’t care if her work was important, or that it was necessary ‘for the greater good.’ I wanted to be home, painting or reading or ...

17 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Careless on Christmas

Submitted to Contest #21

(Genre: dark comedy)Jen clutched the kitchen knife so tightly that his knuckles went white. He had been hiding behind the counter for the past fifteen minutes, trying to hear what the dubious group was planning to do next.“How about we bomb them? We can drop five bombs and finish the rest off with our guns.” Said the guy with the fruit soda.“I think it’s doable, that way, we won’t have to face the army either as none will be left.” The beer drinker added.“I don’t know man, think about all the innocent lives lost.” The man with the water said...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Uncle Jasper

Submitted to Contest #21

This year for Christmas I asked for a DNA testing kit. I wasn’t actually expecting to receive one (it was one of the higher-priced items on my wish list), but it was one of the gifts I wanted the most. My family’s ancestral makeup has never been well-defined; I know that I’m Irish and English, but there’s never been any sort of roots with which I’ve been able to trace my family back. In fact, the amount of research and digging I’ve done has produced only a few results: I can now confidently follow my lineage as far back as one hund...

6 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Eternity

Submitted to Contest #22

Write a short story in which the last line is the countdown to midnight on New Year's Eve.I retired to bed early. Christmas is a bad time for me. To much food and booze. When I awoke, there was someone, not my wife, sitting on the bed. It was the middle of the night. I hadn’t slept too well and I more sensed the intruder’s presence by the pressure he applied on the box spring than by seeing who it was. Then my eyes adjusted to the semi obscurity in the room and I realized that it was God that had come to visit. This put me in a kind a stupor...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

New Years 1920

Submitted to Contest #22

There is a vortex of sorts or at least that’s what I’ve been told.  I am a rational man, always thinking before jumping to conclusions and using sound judgment before letting my emotions wash me away.  Time, like me, moves in a linear direction, from past to now to the future, there are no replays, no going back in the past to redo or fix an omission.  There is no dress rehearsal or retakes or do overs. I have had some relationships that I wished had ended differently than they did, but I refuse to live with regret or that mo...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

DOOMSDAY CLOCK

Shortlisted for Contest #22 ⭐️

Harold Spitzer was thrilled to be celebrating New Year’s Eve, 2030 in Times Square. Tonight, he and his family would be in the midst of the crowds at midnight, but none of them minded. They’d watch the ball drop, then take in other New York City sights over the next few days, about as far from Pasadena as they could get.A nuclear physicist at Cal Tech, Harold had two years ago joined the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as a junior member of the Science and Security Board. His knowledge of foreign countries’ nuclear arms meant he was an imp...

20 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Miracle at the Christmas Inn

Submitted to Contest #21

                               The Miracle at the Christmas Inn                                                       &nbs...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Today's not the Day.

Submitted to Contest #22

I hate going to these kinds of things. My Mom says it’ll be better to go out into the ‘Real World’ or whatever that means. I despise Holiday parties. They are just another ruse for people to be drinking and doing stupid stuff. Yet I’m here anyway, stuck between two people making out and a fat guy smoking his lungs out. Happy New Years Eve to me.  I get up from the couch, coughing my way to the kitchen, hoping to get a dessert that doesn’t taste like shit. Lucky me, the only things that were left was weed brownies and cookies I wouldn't...

5 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Where It All Began

Submitted to Contest #21

“Not a single booking today.” Ernest climbed into bed.  “We have a few guests.” Renee, his wife, said. She got into bed beside him. “It will be enough to cover this month.”    “Yes, but what about next month? And the month after that?”    “We’ll manage,” Renee said. “We always do.”         “This time is different,” Ernest said. “If things don’t pick up by the end of the month, we might not have Erren Everlasting Inn anymore.”    “If that’s the case, so be it.”...

15 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Rebecca's Resolution

Submitted to Contest #22

Rebecca's ResolutionBy: Roman G. HowellTwenty-two more minutes. Only twenty-two more minutes left in the year and his father couldn’t be there for them. Jacob slumped in his chair, rolling his empty champagne flute glass between his fingers. The still unopened champagne bottle waited on the coffee table. The night had started with such promise. His father had made an extra effort to have all of his year-end responsibilities for the company tied up so the two could do the countdown together. However, like every other holiday, something came o...

3 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

THE HUNT

Submitted to Contest #21

It was my first job at the Tafaria Pub as a bartender and it being Christmas eve, the place was decorated with smoking machines, moving light beams and disco balls that reflected a beam of splashing lights on the dance floor. That aside, we were offering free drinks to customers that night. Everyone was in a jovial mood and it seemed like the best place to be. I was staring outside through a window opposite the counter and a group of people approached the entrance of the pub where I worked. They seemed to be in a pub crawl since the street t...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Royals and Cousins

Submitted to Contest #21

It all started the day my dad said he couldn’t pick me up after school. He said I had to walk home because he was out of town. It was all fine with me. I loved walking and listening to music, and that’s exactly what I was planning to do, from the second I walked out the school doors. I forgot to mention, it was the last day before the Christmas break. So I plugged in my earphones, turned on my music, and started the twenty minute walk home. I had just walked on to the main sidewalk when I noticed something white that didn’t really look like ...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

It was like I had met you a long time ago.

Submitted to Contest #22

It was like I had met you a long time ago My dad and I were always close. He put himself through a lot of grief being my father. I am not much of a rule-follower. He had to bail me out of trouble a good number of times – at church, at school, and even once with the police. During the last named experience, When I asked him, somewhat sarcastically, why he did all this for me, he gave an answer both strange and beautiful. He said, “When you were a baby, and I held you in my arms for the first time, it was like I had me...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.