Christmas Bedtime Stories: Read One Aloud Tonight

Wren noticed the robin on the morning of the first of December.

He was sitting in the middle of the front-door wreath, fluffed up against the cold, looking very much like he had decided something.

"Mum," Wren said. "There's a robin in the wreath."

Her mum came to look. The robin tilted his head and watched her back.

"He's chosen us," her mum said softly. "We mustn't disturb him."

Wren took her advent calendar and a cup of warm milk out to the porch. She sat very still. She opened door number one, and found a tiny chocolate snowflake. The robin watched her eat it.

"It's the first day," Wren told him, quietly. "Twenty-four days to go."

The robin chirped, once, and flew off.

The next morning he was back. So Wren brought a few crumbs from her toast and left them on the rim of the wreath. The robin hopped down, ate them very neatly, and looked at her as if to say thank you.

This became their pattern. Every morning of December: a few crumbs, a quiet hello, an advent door. The robin came to know the sound of Wren's wellies on the front path.

On Christmas Eve it snowed properly for the first time. The wreath was iced white, and the robin was puffed up into a perfect round ball.

Wren brought him a tiny bit of icing from a biscuit her grandma had made. "Happy Christmas," she whispered.

The robin took the icing in his small beak and flew up to the porch beam, where he began, very softly, to sing.

It was the first carol Wren heard that year, and the smallest one, and the best.

In the morning, the robin was gone. But on the doorstep, sitting in the snow, was a single perfect red feather.

Wren picked it up and put it on her bedside table, where it stayed, warm and quiet, all through the winter.

On the twenty-third of December, Sage found a small silver bell in the back garden.

It was tucked under the yew tree, half-hidden in the leaves. It had a little leather strap, snapped clean through.

Sage knew, without being told, exactly what it was.

"It's off a reindeer," she told her dad.

Her dad, who was busy hanging a last string of lights, looked at it carefully. "I think you might be right," he said.

Sage put the bell on the kitchen windowsill. She could not stop thinking about it. Somewhere up in the cold sky, a reindeer was missing a bell, and couldn't jingle along with all the others.

After tea, as the sky turned blue and the first star came out, Sage looked at the bell and made up her mind.

"I'd like to put it back where I found it," she told her mum. "On the wall by the yew tree. So it can be found tomorrow night."

Her mum looked at the dark garden, and then at Sage. "It's quite cold out there."

"I know," said Sage. "But the reindeer needs it."

So she put on her woolly hat and her green wellies, right over her pyjamas. Her dad took her free hand, and her mum switched on the little lamp by the back door.

The garden felt very big and very quiet. The grass crunched. Sage's breath came out in small white clouds. She held the bell tight so it would not jingle, and walked all the way down the path, one careful step at a time.

At the low garden wall, she stopped. She set the bell down on the flat stone at the top, where the moonlight could catch it.

"There," she whispered. "Tomorrow night."

Her dad squeezed her hand. "That was a very brave thing," he said.

They walked back up the path together, towards the warm yellow window. Sage had a mince pie, and a very small yawn, and fell asleep proud of her bell.

On Christmas morning she ran to the kitchen window. The bell was gone. In its place, on the flat stone, was a tiny scrap of paper tied with red thread.

Her dad went out with her to fetch it. It said, in very tidy handwriting: Thank you.

Sage kept the note in her bedside drawer, and she still has it.

On the twenty-fourth of December, Juniper opened the very last door of the advent calendar.

Behind it was a small round chocolate, wrapped in gold.

Juniper looked at it. It was the best chocolate of the whole calendar. She was almost sure of it.

Down the hall, her little brother Alder was sitting on the stairs in his dinosaur pyjamas. His calendar had run out two days ago, because he had opened three doors at once.

Alder looked at the gold chocolate. He did not say anything. He just looked.

Juniper held the chocolate in her hand. It felt warm and round and very, very good.

Then she sat down on the step next to him.

She unwrapped the gold paper, slowly, so it crackled. She broke the chocolate in two. One half was a little bigger than the other.

Juniper looked at the two halves. Then she gave Alder the bigger one.

"Oh," said Alder. He held it with both hands. "Thank you."

They ate their chocolate on the stairs, not saying anything, while the lights on the tree went blink, blink, blink.

When they had finished, Alder leaned his head against Juniper's arm. It was a very small lean, and a very warm one.

Juniper found that her half had tasted even better than she had expected. She could not quite say why.

Soon it was time for bed. The house was quiet. The tree was glowing. And on the windowsill, the empty advent calendar sat with all its little doors open, like a row of tiny sleepy eyes.