I am not normally a fan of Christmas stories. Most of them seem formulaic: a poor family suffers a crisis just before Christmas. What if there’s no money for presents? Don’t worry, a miracle will happen at the last minute, and everyone will get what they most wanted.
The Christmas Porringer doesn’t follow that script. The story opens in Bruges, Belgium in the home of eight-year-old Karen who lives with her grandmother. Grandmother is one of the most skillful lacemakers in a city known for its beautiful lace, but she is getting old, and it takes nearly every penny she can earn just to buy enough food for Karen and herself.
It is one day before Christmas Eve, and Karen asks her grandmother if she is sure the Christ Child will bring gifts to fill her wooden shoes. But what concerns her more is why, since Christmas is the Child’s birthday, no one gives gifts to him. “Does no one give him something of his very own?” Grandmother answers, “No one gives such gifts to the Christ child. Thou must give him obedience and love.”
When Karen is given a silver franc for delivering lace to a wealthy woman, her first thought is what Christmas gifts to buy for the Christ Child and Grandmother. Karen buys a pretty green jug for Grandmother, and she chooses a quaintly painted porringer for the Child. She worries that the Child might miss seeing the porringer when he comes to fill her shoes because he won’t be expecting to find a gift for himself. She decides she will put the porringer, with some Christmas cakes, on the front step where it will be easy for Him to see it in the moonlight.
The porringer is gone on Christmas day, so Karen assumes the Christ Child has taken his gift. What really happened to it seems an outrageous act, and it also seems that the loving gift Karen gave will go unrewarded. Spring comes and Grandmother has been sick and unable to work. As their small savings dwindles, it becomes necessary to begin sacrificing the few possessions remaining from more prosperous days.
Though the reader knows what has happened to the porringer, it isn’t until the next Christmas that Karen and Grandmother find out. The Christ Child has indeed taken the gift and used it to gain even more for himself–another loving and obedient soul.
Originally published in 1914, The Christmas Porringer has been reprinted by Purple House Press and is a perfect Christmastime companion to Stein’s Gabriel and the Hour Book.