Warmest holiday greetings to you, 49 Writers friends! In what has become a seasonal tradition, we bring you one of our most popular posts, originally written by Andromeda back in 2009. We hope you’ll use the comments to send your own greetings to friends here at 49 Writers. May the season bring you peace, joy, and inspiration!

Original post:

A few months ago, I was looking up some detail about Harper Lee’s life when I stumbled across a link to a short essay she wrote about a particularly touching Christmas gift she received from her closest friends, a couple living in Manhattan.

In our family we celebrate Chanukah, which just ended, and I’m not usually the type to look for holiday-specific items to post, but this story moved me — and I think it would move any writer imagining the best possible gift one could receive at this or any time of the year.

The author of To Kill a Mockingbird published this piece, “Christmas to Me,” in McCalls Magazine in 1961.

Rather than ruin the story for you by publishing just a paragraph or two, or risk infringing on someone’s copyright, I send you to one of the few places I could find that has the entire (very short) essay online, here…