Recommended translation: Unpublished Letters, trans. and ed. Kurt F. Leidecker, Philosophical Library, 1959.

Excerpt:

To Elisabeth Nietzsche (Pforta, end of November 1861)

Dear Liese: — Since I owe you a letter for quite some time I shall write you an especially fine one now, provided my clumsy pen will not prevent me. Probably there is nothing with which I can entertain you now excerpting writing of—Christmas. Anyhow, isn’t it now our best-loved thought and hasn’t it been all these years around this time! Now, then, lean back comfortably and try to recall one of my first evenings of vacation when we were sitting in the warm room with or without lamp light, and each would present the other with a Christmas list. Meanwhile Mamma and aunt Rosalie would engage next door in mysterious doings and

—we eavesdrop
when secretly words pass between them;
and a rustling, quite peculiar,
now a whisper, now a crackling,
make us curious for the wonders,
while the ghostlike stirring
and the wafting to and fro
make us tremble etc.

Online:
Amazon (Recommended Translation)
Google Books (Recommended Translation)
Nietzsche Source (German, Free Access)