As part of her collection "Christ Legends" Selma Lagerlöf wrote the story "The Holy Night," a Christmas-themed tale first published in sometime in the early 1900s but before her death in 1940. It tells the story of the author at five years old who experienced a great sadness when her grandmother passed which made her recall a story the old woman used to tell about the Holy Night.

The story the grandmother tells is about a poor man who wanders around the village asking people for a single live coal to light his own fire, but keeps getting met with rejection until he runs into a shepherd who finds compassion in his heart to help, especially after seeing the state of the man's home and wife and child.

Read the full story below for a quality Christmas tale about how compassion can lead people to see miracles, especially around that special time of year.

The Christmas stories of the famous authors: Gilbert Keith Chesterton - A Christmas Carol, Lucy Maud Montgomery - A Christmas Inspiration, A Christmas Mistake, Christmas at Red Butte, Lyman Frank Baum -A Kidnapped Santa Claus, Mark Twain - A Letter from Santa Claus, Louisa May Alcott - A Merry Christmas, Leo Tolstoy - A Russian Christmas Party, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Christmas Bells, Nikolai Gogol - Christmas Eve, William Dean Howells - Christmas Everyday, Joseph Rudyard Kipling - Christmas in India, Lyman Frank Baum - Little Bun Rabbit, Elizabeth Harrison - Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe, John Milton - On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Charles Dickens - The Chimes, Nathaniel Hawthorne -The Christmas Banquet, Hans Christian Andersen - The Fir Tree, Selma Lagerlöf - The Holy Night, Hans Christian Andersen - The Little Match Girl, Clement Moore - The Night Before Christmas, Henry van Dyke - The Other Wise Man, William Dean Howells - The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, Beatrix Potter - The Tailor of Gloucester, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Three Kings, Anton Chehov - Vanka.