Some stories are as much a part of Christmas as hanging a wreath on the door. I’ve been considering one that’s meant a great deal to me nearly all my life, and probably has meant as much to others, as well. Of course, it’s Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol.
When I was a little girl back in the days of vinyl records, someone gave my brother and me an RCA Victor album of A Christmas Carol. I spent many forty-minute sessions tucked up on the floor by the phonograph, wrapped in the story like a present under the tree. When I hold it in my hands now, I still hear the actors’ voices as they play Scrooge, Marley, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.
On the inside cover is a modest 1843 quote from the story’s author. “I have endeavored in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.” In my life, Dickens’ wish has come true. As I’ve said, Scrooge and Tiny Tim’s story captivated me and became part of my Christmas growing up memories.
Later, I became a member of the Greater Grand Forks Friday Afternoon Lord Byron Reading Society, a group of friends who met Fridays for two hours of talk, wine, and taking turns reading aloud, all of which allowed us to decompress from busy weeks and start the weekends properly. One holiday season we tackled the unabridged original version of A Christmas Carol. It hadn’t lost any of its charming ability to conjure up the Christmas spirit.
Fast forward to my years of teaching Inupiaq Eskimo children in the remote village of Wales, Alaska. Like schools everywhere, ours turned the last day before vacation into a time for fun. An elder had given her granddaughter a recently made DVD of, you guessed it, A Christmas Carol.
We settled down and watched it, my students and I tumbling into the magic as inevitably as readers/listeners/watchers always have.
It doesn’t matter how A Christmas Carol is presented. No other story has ever captured the sense of good will the season can and should bring.
Happy Holidays. As Tiny Tim pipes up, “God bless us, every one.”