The Story
It was the last night of the old year, and it was terribly cold. The snow fell fast and it was already growing dark. In the cold and darkness, a poor little girl walked barefoot through the streets, for she had come out in her mother's old slippers that morning, which were much too big for her, and she had lost them running across the road when two carriages had gone by at a gallop. One slipper could not be found at all, and a boy had picked up the other and run away with it, laughing, saying he could use it as a cradle when he had children of his own.
So the little girl walked in her bare feet, which were red and blue with cold. She carried in her apron a bundle of matches, and held one packet of them in her hand. Nobody had bought any from her all day. Nobody had given her so much as a copper coin. Shivering and hungry, she crept along, the picture of misery.
The snowflakes fell on her long fair hair, which curled in beautiful locks about her neck, but she thought nothing of her beauty now. Lights were gleaming from every window, and a delicious smell of roast goose filled the air — for it was New Year's Eve. She found a sheltered corner between two houses where one jutted out a little beyond the other, and there she crouched, pulling her thin legs up under her, but she was colder than ever.
She dared not go home. She had sold no matches and earned not a single penny, and her father would certainly beat her. Besides, her home was nearly as cold as the street — it was only a rooftop room, and the wind howled through the largest cracks even though the worst of them had been stopped up with straw and rags.
Her little hands were almost frozen. If only she dared pull one match from the bundle and strike it on the wall, just to warm her fingers a little! She pulled one out — scritch! — how it sputtered and burned! It was a warm bright flame, and she held her hand over it. It burned like a little candle. But it was a strange light. She fancied she was sitting before a large iron stove with polished brass feet and brass fittings, with a bright fire burning cheerfully inside. She stretched out her feet to warm them too — and the match went out. The stove vanished. She was sitting in the cold corner again.
She struck another match. In its glow the wall became transparent as thin gauze, and she could see through it into a warm, bright room where the table was set with a gleaming white cloth, fine china plates, and a roast goose stuffed with apples and dried plums. The goose seemed to leap from the dish and waddle toward her, fork and knife stuck in its back. Then the match went out and all she saw was the cold damp wall.
She struck another. Now she was sitting under the most beautiful Christmas tree she had ever seen — far larger and more splendid than the one she had glimpsed through a rich merchant's glass door the year before. Thousands of candles burned on the branches, and painted toys and gilded fruits and colored pictures swung from the boughs. The little girl stretched out her hand toward them — and the match went out. The Christmas lights rose higher and higher, and she saw they were stars. One of them fell, making a long streak of fire across the sky.
"Someone is dying," said the little girl softly. Her grandmother — the only person who had ever been truly kind to her, who was now dead — had always said that when a star falls, a soul goes up to God.
She struck another match against the wall. A bright light shone around her, and in the middle of the light stood her grandmother, clear and shining and gentle, looking at her exactly as she used to look — with warm eyes and soft hands.
"Grandmother!" cried the little girl. "Oh take me with you! I know you will go when the match goes out, like the warm stove and the roast goose and the beautiful Christmas tree." And she struck all the rest of the matches as quickly as she could, for she wanted to keep her grandmother there. And the matches blazed so brightly that they lit everything around them, and her grandmother had never before looked so large or so beautiful, and she lifted the little girl in her arms and they flew together, in brightness and joy and warmth, high above the cold earth, above hunger and fear and darkness, to where there was no more cold and no more want.
In the corner between the two houses, when the cold morning came and the New Year's sun rose pale and late, they found the little girl with red cheeks and a smile on her face. Dead. On New Year's morning. The burnt-out matches were scattered about her.
"She was trying to warm herself," the people said. But no one knew what beautiful things she had seen, or in what brightness she had gone, with her grandmother, into the joy of the New Year.