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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.

150+ 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 2 of 10

The Last Night Of Autumn

Submitted to Contest #300

Autumn was close to its end. The air would change from cold to icily sharp, and the leaves on the ground would be replaced by white, crispy snow. The animals of the season were departing to their shelters for the weeks to come, and darkness was taking over the sky. Once she would have retreated once the Autumn was over, back to the house of burnt colours hidden away by the bramble to burrow under furs and dine at the harvest. To trek down the staircases formed by branches and bark and walk among the badgers and the squirrels like she was one...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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The House of Van Severen or 'Room Service Please'

Submitted to Contest #299

The House of Van Severen or 'Room Service Please.'What is 'the house of Van Severen'? Let me explain. Decades ago, an internationally known Dutch/Belgian man named Van Severen became a famous architect and furniture designer. One of his sons, Haans, carries the legacy by designing and selling homewares throughout Europe and the United States. Now, you might be wondering why I'm talking about this. The phrase 'the house of Van Severen' has a special meaning in my family. It's not about the famous architect, but about a series of events that r...

15 likes 24 comments 24
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Too Little Too Late

Submitted to Contest #299

I remember now: This was the Thanksgiving trip when two-year-old Rachel fell in the toilet, wearing the frilly dress (the only dress) I had packed so she could look cute for church. And it was the time my four-year-old, with logic all her own, carefully disassembled and reorganized in long rows her great-grandmother’s almost-completed thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. And Rachel doodled all over my aunt’s pristine walls with an indelible black marker. And Danny— But all that came later. Rewind a few days . . . “Thanksgiving in Jamaica?” I squaw...

6 likes 2 comments 2
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One-in-a-Gazillion Chance

Submitted to Contest #299

One-in-a-Gazillion ChanceSharon sighed heavily as she looked out the window at the tourist signs, but didn’t say a word for a while. Finally, she exploded, “This has been a very difficult trip for me. I have either been attending conferences or been working on my office project, throughout this trip. Working late every night. You two have had a great time on this trip, but…” Her husband, Dilip, said. “I’m sorry you’ve been so busy with tight deadlines.” He looked over at his daughter, Darla, sitting beside him in the passenger seat. “It’s tr...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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Hide and Seek 1984

Submitted to Contest #299

It was Christmas Eve, 1984, at my grandma’s house. Her townhouse was packed with what felt like 100 family members ranging in age from 2 to 75, some more beloved than others. Great Aunt Mandy was likely the least beloved by the cousins. While arguably a decent person, she was, well, crabby. She didn’t like kids and had zero tolerance for our shenanigans. Some cousins enjoyed winding her up like a top and watching her spin, shouting at kids in an angry, dizzying, and unpredictable rant. Others, like me, were terrified of her and preferred to...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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A Matter of Perspective

Submitted to Contest #298

"You want me to eat what part of the snail?" Marcus's voice carried across the outdoor Parisian café, causing several heads to turn. Cherry blossoms floated down around him like pink snowflakes.The waiter sighed with the practiced patience of someone who'd explained escargot to Americans a thousand times. "The entire body, monsieur. It is already removed from the shell and prepared with garlic butter. It is spring—the season for trying new delicacies.""Where I'm from, we spray those things with poison," Marcus muttered, poking the gastropod ...

34 likes 12 comments 12
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The 5.30 Easter Trampoline Throwdown

Submitted to Contest #297

As anecdotes go, this tale is one of which I am both embarrassed and proud—the former immediately after the event in question (and due, largely, to external shaming by adults), and the latter in more recent hindsight (and with the greater perspective of actually being an adult). The time? A gorgeous Easter weekend when I was about 10 or 11 years old; a bookish and somewhat bullied child, but with odd outbursts of chutzpah that coincided with my Taurus star sign. The scene? An idyllic seaside camping resort outside East London where the Wild...

6 likes 2 comments 2
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Eggs in A Basket

Submitted to Contest #296

Hi this is Summer Austin ready to write an original story hopefully my mind is not filled with other things that I've read so that I don't copy anyone else's ideas.I have in my mind a story my daughter wrote but I am not going to say anything because I don't know what she would approve of.I will write instead a Easter story about what happened when we were younger with we got Easter baskets that were hidden from us at our step parents parents house or step-grandparents and we would go look around the house and find it in the bathtub or behin...

9 likes 4 comments 4
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On a Wing and a... Coffee?

Submitted to Contest #293

Shaun was ecstatic about his vacation. He hadn’t taken a real vacation in nearly a decade. There was always work to be done around the house, or a sick family member, or a funeral, or some other important activity that kept him close to home instead of taking a trip to someplace new. This year, he put in his vacation request at work three months prior to the date, and it was immediately approved. He made his hotel and flight reservations the same day his boss approved the request. And for the past three months he had...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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Red is the colour

Submitted to Contest #292

“White is the colour” I whispered to myself as the Dolmus, which literally means stuffed bus in Turkish, bumped and rocked beneath me as the driver raced along the dusty road. I close my eyes against the bright morning light, grip the rail on top of the seat in front of me, and begin to repeat the phrase over and over, a meditational mantra to help me remember. The memory comes forward, and I find myself reliving my first journey on this same road all those decades ago. I gasped in wonder seeing the festooned lights of the village spreading ...

2 likes 0 comments 0
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The Universal Obsession of Max Preensworthy

Submitted to Contest #291

This is the story of Max Preensworthy, a man addicted to exactly the same thing as you or I. I'll come back to that. First about Max: Max is almost 52, so his childhood is almost lost to him. His school teachers have forgotten him and he has no close friends. If cats lived longer, one would remember him. He remembers her.  It was England, 1973, Max was ten years old. Every morning he skirted Lister’s Farm to avoid the snapping sheepdogs, crossed a couple of empty fields, and walked along the back of a row of sandstone cottages to Chinsb...

33 likes 14 comments 14
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The Headache

Submitted to Contest #290

The Headache Sometimes the brightest medical minds shake their collective noggins, pat you on the knee, and hurry out before you ask questions they can’t answer. This was the second time they’d entombed me in the CT scanner. The bang bang banging was making my head implode. I didn’t cotton to the idea of letting them poison me if they found cancer. If ice packs and aspirin couldn’t cure my constant headache, I’d totter up to heaven or wherever they send women who are plumb sick of being sick. I punched the panic button. Before Keisha Jack...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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Tijuana at Five

Submitted to Contest #290

Words woke me and I looked up through the smell of car mustiness and petrol to a smiling moustache on a strange face. I was still curled in the darkness of the backseat and didn’t know if it had been on a long drive or if we had arrived in Mexico. I didn’t know if I was awake but I did know that we were sitting still now with the engine still vibrating. The moustache man wore dark glasses under a slouchy light brown military kind of hat with a shiny bill. I saw brown skin and a smile but he was just a blur with a background of glaring lights...

18 likes 4 comments 4
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Kill Your Parents!

Submitted to Contest #288

[NOTE: Story contains violence and death.] Aaron, Celeste, Florence, Stella, Catharine, Alex, Ariana. The eldest three tried to kill their parents when Aaron was fourteen, the others one and three years behind him. Stella, at nine, refused to help, but she grabbed Catharine and Alex when they ejected themselves from one of the four rear doors of their massive family car, pulling herself out back-first so that she took the brunt of the fall. A crack to the head landed her in the ICU while the younger ones suffered scrapes, bruises, and a bro...

8 likes 0 comments 0
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The Incident Around Ballet and Bouquets

Submitted to Contest #287

On the couple's day, a couple decides to celebrate their love for each other in a famous restaurant. It just received a good, no, fantastic review from an equally famous review writer. There was really no reason that they shouldn't find themselves here after five lovely years with each other. Matilda and Jerimiah have been together before that too but that's not the details we should be worrying about. They just arrive in front of this famous restaurant, and they excitedly walk to the entrance. Jeremiah holds the door against his lean build ...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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