"The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree" (Russian: Мальчик у Христа на ёлке; Mal'chik u Khrista na yolke) is a Christmas-time short story written by Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1876.
On December 26, 1875, Fyodor Dostoevsky and his daughter Aimée attended a children's ball and a Christmas tree held at the St. Petersburg Artists' Club.
On December 27, Dostoevsky and Anatoly Koni arrived at the Colony for Juvenile Delinquents on the Okhta (outskirts of St. Petersburg at that time) headed by the famous teacher and writer Pavel Rovinsky.
[2] The author begins by telling us he has made this story up, but that even so, he thinks it must have actually happened—on Christmas Eve, in a great town, at a time of terrible frost.
The boy of the title, "six years old or younger," awakens in a frigid cellar, reaches for his mother, and finds she is "as cold as the wall."
Apparently he has just arrived from a remote village; this is the first time he has ever experienced the bustling streets of a vibrant city—especially festive, as this is Christmas Eve.