As part of her collection "Christ Legends" Selma Lagerlöf wrote the story "The Holy Night," a Christmas-themed tale first published in sometime in the early 1900s but before her death in 1940. It tells the story of the author at five years old who experienced a great sadness when her grandmother passed which made her recall a story the old woman used to tell about the Holy Night. The story the grandmother tells is about a poor man who wanders around the village asking people for a single live coal to light his own fire, but keeps getting met with rejection until he runs into a shepherd who finds compassion in his heart to help, especially after seeing the state of the man's home and wife and child.Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was a Swedish writer. In 1909, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature becoming the first woman to do so. She is mostly known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils). 
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