What Child Is This? by Gilbert M. Stack
What Child Is This? by Gilbert M. Stack
When I first started publishing short stories with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine I had the idea to write a series of Christmas stories all with the title of a popular Christmas song. What Child Is This? was my first and only attempt and while ultimately AHMM didn’t take it (an assistant editor told me it was a lovely story but a bit too sweet for them). It was later picked up by Red Rose Publishing where it was well received and now I’ve made it available as a self-published work.
Christmas can be a complex holiday. On the one hand, it’s clearly a time of great joy for many people, yet, contrarily, for many suffering loss it reinforces their unhappiness. I think that that is why so many Christmas stories focus on the theme of healing—finding something that inspires a person to reach out of ourselves and help others, and in doing so to find that happiness that has been escaping them for so long.
That’s the circumstance that Agnes Hancock and her husband find themselves in in this story of the Great Depression. The Hancocks’ only child was killed in the First World War and they never quite recovered from their loss. Years later, a mute little boy wanders into Agnes’ store with no one apparently looking out for him. No one knows who the child is or where he comes from, and Agnes finds feeling she thought dead with her son reigniting inside her. Yet, even as she takes the child into her home, she knows that this newfound happiness can’t last. Somewhere the child’s parents have to be out there.
This story still brings tears to my eyes.
