The fairy tale is about Peregrinus Tyss, who returns home after three years of wandering and learns that his parents have died during his absence. His father, a wealthy merchant, left him a house with a large apartment in Frankfurt am Main. The shy, dreamy Peregrinus then lives a lonely life. Aline, the old, ugly housekeeper of his parents, takes care of everything and allows the 36-year-old Peregrinus to live as if his childhood had not long since passed. He gifts himself toys and children's books for Christmas. When he tries to unwrap one of the Christmas presents, he finds it empty. The package must have been mixed up, as Peregrinus is missing another one that contained tin figures. After playing with the gifts for a while, Peregrinus packs the toys back up and, as he does every year, brings them to the children of a poor family, this time the bookbinder Lämmerhirt's family. E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) was a German writer of the Romantic era. In many of his works, he remained true to the tastes of his reading contemporaries: stories about eerie events, encounters with the devil, fateful turns in the life of a protagonist that he cannot resist. He masterfully condensed his narratives into the unanswered question of whether the described haunting actually took place or perhaps only occurred in the mind of the affected character.