The Little Girl with the Matchsticks

The Little Girl with the Matchsticks

                It was New Year’s Eve, and a poor little girl was out on the cold streets selling matchsticks. She was hungry and freezing, with neither hat nor shoes. She was afraid to go home for her father would surely beat her as she had not sold any matchsticks that day.

                In a nook between two buildings she tried to warm herself by lighting her matches. In the light of the first match she saw a hot iron stove. She then lit a second match and this time saw a fully laden dinner table with a cooked goose that came right toward her. It too disappeared as the match went out. By the light of the third match she saw a beautiful Christmas tree lit with thousands of candles. The lights of the tree went higher and higher until she saw that they were the stars. One became a shooting star and she remembered her grandmother telling her that a shooting star means that a person has died and a soul gone to heaven.

             Upon   lighting   the   next   match   she   saw   her   grandmother,   the   only   person   who   ever   loved   her. Hoping to keep her grandmother as long as possible, she quickly lit the whole bunch of   matches. Her grandmother then lifted her in her arms and they flew with joy and glory higher and higher and there was no cold, no hunger, no fear – they were with God.

            The   next   morning   her   body   was   found   with   a   smile   upon   her   lips,   frozen   to   death   and   with   a   burned   out   bunch   of matches. “She wanted to warm herself!” people said. No one knew what beauty she had seen or with what glory she had gone with her grandmother into a joyous new year.