One Christmas Eve by Langston Hughes

'Next,' goddamn it! This is not the DMV!"

Despite my adoration for Langston Hughes’s poetry and short fiction, it is hard to believe that I have never actually reviewed any of his work on this blog. That feels like a pretty big oversight and is quite embarrassing, which I’m finally fixing today!  Hughes is one of the towering figures of the Harlem Renaissance that requires no introduction, a literary rockstar of his day, and yet I sometimes wonder how often people really read him anymore. My guess? Not nearly enough, which is a real shame.

If you are searching for a cozy, feel-good Christmas story to put you in a festive mood, One Christmas Eve is very much not that kind of tale. Hughes doesn’t soften or sentimentalize anything. Instead, he uses the holiday, a time supposedly built around generosity, kindness, and innocence, to expose how deeply racism shapes everyday life for working-class Black folks.

At the center of the story is little Joe, whose excitement about seeing Santa Claus is painfully relatable and heartbreaking all at once. Like any child, he buys into the magic. But that magic shatters almost immediately when the Santa he encounters at a local movie theatre turns out to be cruel, hostile, and openly racist. Rather than offering warmth or wonder, this Santa ridicules Joe and frightens him away, reinforcing the idea that even spaces meant for joy aren’t safe for Black children.

What resonates for me is how ordinary this cruelty feels. Joe’s mother gently explains that it wasn’t the “real” Santa. He's just a mean, racist white man in a costume. That moment lands with such devastation. Santa Claus is supposed to belong to all children, a universal symbol of happiness and goodwill. Hughes shows how hollow that promise is in a society built upon the foundations of white supremacy For Joe, racism doesn’t arrive in some abstract form; rather, it shows up wearing a red suit and a white beard.

Set against the backdrop of 1920s or 1930s America, the story reminds us that racism isn’t just explicit hatred or violence against marginalized groups. It’s the small, everyday microaggressions and humiliations that steal childhood innocence and replace wonder with fear. Hughes strips away the fantasy of Christmas to reveal a harsher truth: in a racist society, even joy is unevenly distributed. It’s not exactly a comforting read but a stark reminder of why Hughes still matters. He forces us to look closely at the gap between the ideals we celebrate and the harsh reality of systemic racism.