On today’s episode, we warm up for a couple of Christmas tales with a tale of summer by Catherine Conant. The story is called “Doin’ the Dishes,” (so maybe that’s the holiday connection right there, for anyone who spends the season throwing parties and cleaning up after them). After Catherine takes us back to the carefree days of summer, we launch into two Christmas tales. The first, from a collection called Christmas at Grandma’s, is a story called “The Children’s Christmas Play,” by Donald Davis. And we’ll follow that story up with a piece from Andy Offutt Irwin, one of his stories about Aunt Marguerite (the fictional great aunt who at 80 years old went to medical school, and who forms the backbone of Andy’s canon of original stories). It’s called “The Glass Christmas.” Happy Holidays, from The Apple Seed.