Reading A Christmas Carol Every Christmas

You said you read Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol every Christ­mas. Why?

I have no idea when I first read A Christ­mas Car­ol. Per­haps it was read to me. I might have heard it on the radio, if you can believe in such ancient times. Many times I have seen the British film, in black and white, with actor Alas­tair Sim who played Scrooge quite won­der­ful­ly. I took my kids to see stage adap­ta­tions of the book. I have read the book to my wife any num­ber of times. Indeed, it has been said that the best way to enjoy the book is to read it out loud. I’ll do so this Christ­mas eve.

Dick­ens wrote the book quick­ly, appar­ent­ly with­in a six-week peri­od in 1843 even as he was work­ing on a much larg­er ser­i­al nov­el, Mar­tin Chuz­zle­wit, not, in my view, one of his bet­ter efforts. As he wrote A Christ­mas Car­ol in a fren­zy, he described him­self alter­nat­ing between cry­ing and laugh­ing aloud. Still, the first draft was not per­fect. The orig­i­nal man­u­script is in the Mor­gan Library (NYC) and, yes, I have looked at it when it’s been put on dis­play there. Here, look at it for your­self.

When vis­it­ing class­es, I used to show kids pages from this MS by way of demon­strat­ing that even a writer of genius revis­es his or her work.

But I note that the open­ing words, “Mar­ley was dead: to begin with,” was not altered, and I think of that sen­tence as one of great brilliance.

I think the writ­ing through­out is quite won­der­ful, so deep and incise in delin­eat­ing char­ac­ter and place, while swerv­ing madly—like a race­car dri­ver on a twisty course—from humor to pathos.

I admire the con­struc­tion and pace—a per­fect novella—which allows me to read it on a Christ­mas eve—the very best time to enjoy it.

When the book was first pub­lished, it was an instant and enor­mous cul­tur­al and pub­lish­ing suc­cess. It has nev­er ceased to be. It has been sug­gest­ed that the book invent­ed mod­ern Christmas.

The most curi­ous thing is—after all these read­ings and years—it nev­er fails to move me.

Why? Why does it always bring tears to my eyes?

I sus­pect I feel there is a bit of Scrooge in me—as I sus­pect there is some­thing of Scrooge in every­one. Accord­ing­ly, it reminds me that I regret hav­ing done this or that—however small—or maybe big. I con­nect too—if you have been a child you know it—to the feel­ings of aban­don­ment that Scrooge as a child experienced.

So, in my expe­ri­ence, A Christ­mas Car­ol is ulti­mate­ly a tale of for­give­ness, of redemp­tion, and it is redemp­tion by virtue of giv­ing, the pow­er to make oth­ers hap­pi­er, better—by love.

How could I not need that mes­sage? How could I not be moved?

 “And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless us, Every One.”