Though Arthur Conan Doyle sold his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887 to Beeton’s Christmas Annual, “Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is the only account of the great detective which deals with Christmas. We learn, in this short piece written for the January 1892 edition of the Strand Magazine, how a battered hat and a Christmas goose lead Holmes to the solution of a mystery, the freeing of an innocent man and the recovery of a giant blue jewel.
