I read this story, "The Gift" when I was a child. It was about a family on a ship going to another planet, and the little boy was sad because they couldn't have their Christmas tree on the ship with him, so the father takes the boy to a viewport and shows him the stars and makes a moving speech about how the stars are their Christmas lights. I've been told that the story was in "R is for Robot" but I would like to know all other anthologies it has been in, because I have forgotten the name of the story collection I had as a child. It had a lot of stories from many different authors. "The Gift" may have had a different title in this collection. How can I find out all the anthologies it has been published in?

THE GIFT.....

...It was Originally Published, with a great fold-out painting to go with it... in an issue of Esquire Magazine......

But to name its EVERY publication? Ray has appeared in over 800 anthologies. I'm sure "The Gift" was in a school reader of ours. Donn Albright could list them all, but rest assured he won't (at least, I wouldn't ask him to.) For years there was a reference work titled "Short Story Index" where, if you wanted to go back to when the story was first published (1952 in this case--happy 50th anniversary to "The Gift"!) and look it up in each subsequent volume, you should be able to compile quite a list. The most recent volume I've seen, though, was around 1993, so possibly it's been replaced by some online source available through subscription. I guess the best thing you could do would be to ask a reference librarian how to access this source.

I'm posting here to link to my new review of the TV version of "The Gift", which Bradbury wrote for the Steve Canyon series in the 1950s.

The review is here (and includes the painting Nard referred to above).

In response to dandelion's post above (yes, I know it was nearly 7 years ago!), one of the classic story indexes (indices?) is Contento, which did indeed used to be a book. Nowadays, it's online and freely accessible, here:
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/ISFAC/0start.htm

Contento's listing for "The Gift" is here:
http://www.philsp.com/homevill...FAC/s39.htm#A483.141

I don't think even Contento lists EVERY appearance of a story. Once a story gets into school textbooks, it will tend to go off the radar.