Who Ate the Pink Sweetmeat? And Other Christmas Stories — Reading Companion

Trade and Scarcity in the Title Story

Coolidge’s opening establishes a precise economic scale. Job Tuke’s shop is “scarcely larger than a stall”; he buys stock in dozens, not bulk. The narrator notes that when stock runs low, Job “rejoiced in his heart” but did not replenish—he saved for spring and lived on the remainder. This detail is not a lesson in thrift but a realistic constraint. The three remaining stockings are described by size and color: a large dark mixed gray, a smaller white, and a dark blue pair sized for a child of seven or eight. The specificity suggests that the story’s resolution will hinge on material limits, not abundance.

The sweetmeat itself is never seen. The title question drives the plot, but the excerpts show no scene of accusation or confession. Instead, the narrative dwells on the shop’s quiet routine and the Tukes’ contentment with “very moderate prosperity.” The catalog subject “Conduct of life” fits, but the story’s engine is economic vulnerability, not overt moralizing.

A Cherokee Miner and a Mexican Mayordomo

F. L. Stealey’s “The Patroncito’s Christmas” introduces Cherokee Sam, a miner who resents a jabbering group of Mexicans. The language is period-typical: “a jabbering and a waving of hands by them thar Mexicans.” Later, a Mexican mayordomo arrives on a gray burro with a pack-train of gifts. He addresses Sam as “Don Cherokee Sam” and asks where to store the patroncito’s Christmas presents. The cabin is filled with “box, bag, and bale, closely piled.”

The excerpt does not reveal Sam’s reaction or the story’s outcome, but the scene reverses expectations: the resentful miner receives abundance from the very people he dismissed. The catalog subject “Children’s stories” is misleading here—the protagonist appears to be an adult. The story’s setting (a gulch, a cabin, a burrada) and its cross-cultural encounter are more prominent than any child’s conduct.

Cherry Pie and Comparative Poverty

Kate Upson Clark’s “Cherry Pie” centers on Elsie Perch, who consoles herself for not having velvet clothes by remembering her family’s cherry tree. The tree is bare in December, but she imagines its summer fruit. The Christmas dinner will feature cherry pie made from canned cherries—Grandma Perch’s specialty. Elsie contrasts her home with the “squalid and miserable” houses below, and notes that her father and uncle never come home in a “cruel, drunken fury.”

When her friend Millie says she can have no Christmas present because the rent is overdue, Elsie offers the prospect of cherry pie. Millie has never tasted it. The story uses material details—canned cherries, flaky crust, a tenement yard—to frame generosity within scarcity. The catalog subject “Children – Conduct of life” applies, but the excerpt shows Elsie’s moral growth through comparison and empathy, not through a direct lesson.

These six stories share a Christmas setting but diverge in voice and milieu. Readers may note how each author handles economic limitation: some treat it as a backdrop, others as a plot mechanism. The collection rewards attention to small objects—a stocking, a sweetmeat, a cherry pie—that carry more weight than their size suggests. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the resolutions remain unknown, but the patterns of scarcity and unexpected giving are consistent across the selections.

The rain kept drumming against the window while I finished Who Ate the Pink Sweetmeat?, struck by how those 1884 children carried their worries so quietly. Afterwards, restless, I found myself drifting toward a different shelf, picking up Jack Among the Indians; Or, A Boy's Summer on the Buffalo Plains — A Closer Reading. The same unhurried loneliness seemed to hum there, a boy learning what the empty plains could teach about steadiness.