This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

On this special holiday episode of the writer's voice,

we'll hear a story from 2013,

The Christmas Miracle by Rebecca Curtis,

which appeared in the December 23rd and 30th 2013 issue of the magazine.

Curtis is the author of the Story Collection 20 Grand and Other Tales of Love and Money,

and a winner of the Rona Jaffy Foundation Writers Award for Fiction.

Now here's Rebecca Curtis.

The Christmas Miracle.

Cats were dying. The Christmas miracle.

Cats were dying. This happens of course, but in this case they were dying in a gory way one after another and my nieces who were six and seven years old were witnessing the deaths and it was Christmas, the most magical, horrible, spiritual, dark and stressful time of the year. So we, my older sister and her husband, my younger twin brothers, my sister's in-laws, our

mother and our uncle, and the other relatives who were gathered at my sister's house in Revelstoke for the holiday

were trying to prevent more cat deaths. My sister had had five cats. She'd

adopted them from the pound because they were going to be killed. She wanted every living being to be happy.

I am telling this story to you, Kay, even though you are a Russian communist and a Jewish person who doesn't believe Jesus was the son of God.

And even though Christmas is an obnoxious holiday when millions of people decapitate pine trees

and watch them slowly die in their living rooms, because miracles can happen on any day.

And as long as man has existed, he's celebrated this weirdest time of year,

the shortest stretch of sunlight, the winter solstice, as a time of fear, change, courage, and passion.

I'm going to tell you the story of a miracle that happened at Christmas.

I was not at a great point in my life leading up to the miracle.

...