Christmas Reading: The Night the Lights Went Out
Read the story. Then answer the questions.
On Christmas Eve the wind howled around the house, and snow piled up against the windows. Inside, everything was ready: the tree glittered with lights, the turkey was in the oven and Dad had just switched on the Christmas film.
Then, with a loud click, everything went dark.
"A power cut!" said Mum. "The storm must have brought down a line." Nora pressed her face to the window. The whole street was black.
At first nobody knew what to do. The film was gone, the oven was cold and the tree was just a dark shape in the corner. Nora's little brother Leo started to cry. Then Grandpa found a box of candles in the drawer. Soon the room was full of soft, golden light.
"When I was a boy," Grandpa said, "we had candles on the tree every Christmas." He told them about the winter when the lake froze so hard that the whole village skated on it. Mum made sandwiches instead of turkey, and they ate them on the floor like a picnic. They played charades, and Leo laughed so much that he forgot he had been crying.
Late in the evening, the lights flashed back on. The tree glittered again and the film started where it had stopped. But nobody wanted to watch it. "Can we have another story, Grandpa?" Nora asked.
