Hans Christian Andersen's The Fir Tree (1844) follows a young tree so anxious about what is coming next that it misses its own best years, cut down at last for a Christmas it barely gets to enjoy. It is not a comfortable story, and that is exactly why it is worth reading aloud to someone old enough to sit with an unhappy ending. The copyright on it ran out long ago, which means it is free to read, print or read aloud without asking anyone's permission. The full text lives at Project Gutenberg and at the Internet Archive, not on this site, and it sits alongside a run of similar nineteenth-century stories and poems split here between younger listeners and older ones.

What copyright expiring actually means

A written work passes into the public domain once its copyright term has run out, which in Britain is generally seventy years after the author's death. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and Andersen's own The Little Match Girl (1845) are both well past that point, so what you find in an archive is the whole story.

Project Gutenberg holds plain-text and e-reader versions of most of the major nineteenth-century Christmas stories, Dickens and Andersen included, transcribed from out-of-copyright editions. The Internet Archive goes further for some titles, hosting scanned images of the original printed pages alongside the text. The British Library's digitised collections hold some of the same material in facsimile, useful where the physical object, the typesetting, the woodcuts, is part of what makes the story worth finding.

These are not read-aloud-in-one-sitting stories in the way a modern picture book is. Dickens writes long sentences and expects a patient listener; Andersen's stories are short but bleak in a way that needs a reader old enough to sit with them. Christina Rossetti's poem In the Bleak Midwinter, written in the 1870s, and Thomas Hardy's The Oxen (1915) both reward being read slowly, once. None of them were written for children specifically, which sets them apart from the shorter list meant for younger ears.

Public domain means a text's copyright has run out, so it can be read, copied and shared without asking anyone's permission. For Christmas stories, that mostly means work from the nineteenth century: Hans Christian Andersen, Clement Clarke Moore and their contemporaries, whose stories now sit in open archives. They were not written for a modern child's attention span, and some are gentler reading than others, so it is worth knowing what you are choosing before you sit down with a three-year-old on your lap.

Andersen's shorter tales

Hans Christian Andersen's The Fir Tree (1844) is the Christmas story most often found in these collections, and it reads aloud well to children old enough to sit through a story with a properly sad ending, which this one has. Andersen wrote in Danish, so any English text is a translation, and translations vary in how stiff or how warm they sound; it is worth reading a page before committing to the whole thing, because some nineteenth-century translations keep a formality that does not suit a very young listener.

Clement Clarke Moore's poem

"A Visit from St. Nicholas", published in 1823 and better known by its first line, "'Twas the night before Christmas", is short enough for the youngest listeners and easy to read aloud in one sitting. It is also the poem that fixed much of the reindeer-and-chimney imagery now associated with Santa Claus. If you want the difference between those two figures explained properly, that is covered on Father Christmas and Santa Claus: What Is the Difference? rather than here.

Where to find the texts

• Project Gutenberg holds plain-text and downloadable editions of Andersen's fairy tales and of Moore's poem, useful when you want something to read straight off a screen or print out.
• The Internet Archive holds scanned copies of older printed editions, which often keep the original illustrations and give a better sense of how the story first looked on the page.

Neither archive edits these texts for a modern child, so pacing, vocabulary and endings are exactly as their authors left them. For guidance on reading an older or unfamiliar text aloud so it lands well, see For Grown-Ups: Reading Aloud Well. If you would rather read something written with a read-aloud time already worked out, the site's own stories are gathered at Christmas Stories to Read Aloud.

A handful of the best-known Christmas stories and poems have been out of copyright for a long time, which means the full texts sit in public archives, free to read, print or read aloud without asking anyone's permission. This is about those texts: which ones hold up for an older child or an adult reader, and where each one actually lives online.

What being out of copyright means in practice

A written work passes into the public domain once its copyright term has run out, which in Britain is generally seventy years after the author's death. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl (1845) are both well past that point, so what you find online is the whole story.

Where the texts are kept

Project Gutenberg holds plain-text and e-reader versions of most of the major nineteenth-century Christmas stories, Dickens included, transcribed from out-of-copyright editions. The Internet Archive goes further for some titles, hosting scanned images of the original printed pages alongside the text. The British Library's digitised collections hold some of the same material in facsimile, useful where the physical object, the typesetting, the woodcuts, is part of what makes the story worth finding.

What suits an older child or an adult

These are not read-aloud-in-one-sitting stories in the way a modern picture book is. Dickens writes long sentences and expects a patient listener; Andersen's story is short but bleak in a way that needs a reader old enough to sit with it. Christina Rossetti's poem In the Bleak Midwinter, written in the 1870s, and Thomas Hardy's The Oxen (1915) both reward being read slowly, once. None of them were written for children specifically, which is part of what separates them from the stories on the younger children's list on this page.

If you're reading one of these aloud rather than handing it to a reader who'll take it alone, the guide on reading aloud well covers pacing for exactly this kind of older, denser prose. The site's own stories, written for reading aloud from the start, are at Christmas stories to read aloud.