A pair of Christmas tales examine thrift, secrecy, and domestic care: in one, a working man quietly accumulates bank-notes hidden in an old waistcoat, becoming increasingly anxious and stingy until his wife’s inadvertent sale of the garment triggers a personal crisis; the other sketches a bleak holiday that gradually gives way to a more hopeful new year, tracing hardship, small acts of kindness, and moral reckonings within ordinary households.