Would you like to see my favourite Christmas story ever written? It’s this out of print one, Miss Flora McFlimsey’s Christmas Eve:
It possibly isn’t the best Christmas story ever written and looking at it as an adult, some of the illustrations are just plain bad, but it’s the first Christmas story that I remember having read to me and it continues to be my favourite.
It’s an old fashioned (well, it was written in the sixties) story about a doll who lives in the attic, forgotten and alone. A mouse tells her that it is Christmas so she sneaks downstairs to look at the Christmas tree and is discovered by Father Christmas, who happens to be one doll short for the children’s presents.
There’s just something so lovely about it. I get quite choked up at the idea of a forgotten, unloved doll getting a second chance to be loved. I think this is why Jessie’s song in Toy Story 2 made me cry.
This story is best read aloud – Flora McFlimsey is an excellent name for reading aloud.
I learned fairly recently that this story is actually part of a series so now one of my life’s goals is to own them all.