Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

[Petrushka]

I confess to reading this every Christmastide and marvel anew at Dickens' wonderful prose with every reading.

What do the board's resident Dickens enthusiasts think? Certainly, it has moments of sentimentality but it is at the same time a very dark, often bleak, work permeated by death from beginning to near the end.

What do others think?

[Roehre]

It's my favourite Dickens

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I confess to reading this every Christmastide and marvel anew at Dickens' wonderful prose with every reading.

What do the board's resident Dickens enthusiasts think? Certainly, it has moments of sentimentality but it is at the same time a very dark, often bleak, work permeated by death from beginning to near the end.

What do others think?

It's a regular treat for me, too, Pet - so much so that it's difficult for me to be "objective" about it. I do agree with what you say about the darker side of the work: so much is about lost opportunities and the cruelty of thoughtless selfishness. The image at the end of Marley's visit of the ghosts of dead misers aching to be able to help the living pulls off the (unique?) feat of combining the sentimental and the genuinely spine-tingling.

You've whetted my appetite!

Best Wishes.

[antongould]

I read it almost every Christmas and find something new to further delight every time.

[Petrushka]

In reading of Scrooge's earlier life with the Ghost of Christmas Past I, for one, think back, albeit unconsciously, of my own past Christmasses and I'm sure Dickens calculated that the reader would do just that. In creating this effect of the reader travelling along with Scrooge I believe that Dickens art is at its greatest. No matter how many times you read it (and I must be coming up to my 40th by now) the shock you feel when you find yourself thinking of your own Christmasses yet to come is surely a moment of genius. I would place this small book (99 pages in my edition, no notes) amongst the most influential in the whole of English Literature.

[PatrickOD]

Opus 14 No 2

What with Christmas approaching, and reading again those passages from Dickens that have so coloured my own imaginaton about the season, and, with the gnawing gloom that underpins my outward facade of celebratory joy, it was no wonder that I fell into a sombre reverie while listening to the radio one dreary afternoon.

I thought of Colm M......., and the gate lodge that was the practice room of the music department back then; Colm of the donkey-bray laugh which would have identified him instantly in a crowded Albert Hall; who played banjo in our college jazz band, and who aspired, in vain, to play the piano. He was a regular companion in the gate lodge when I went there to practice, and the piece I now remember was one I needed for an audition to get on a college course; the piece that was recently performed in a lunchtime concert - opus 14 no 2 in G major by Beethoven.

What makes it so memorable for me is not how I played it, which truthfully was not too badly (it got me on the course), but how my friend listened. He saw me through from stumbling beginnings, incessant wrong notes, endless repetitions, and his braying laughter accompanied my many crashing frustrations on the keyboard. But when the piece was ready for complete run-throughs, he was attentive and inordinately admiring. His favourite passage was the second movement and he made me play it many times on its own. He loved the harmonies, noting the occasional quirky ones, and enjoyed singing the bass line in different places. Like myself, he loved the piece more than the performance, which is how it should be.

Colm has been dead a long time and long forgotten. The sonata has rarely been heard by me since those gate lodge days. The two have now come together again and have drawn me into their dearly remembered company in a manner that surely Dickens himself would have recognised.

[Chris Newman]

In the 60s I witnessed at a one-man performance of A Christmas Carol by Emlyn Williams. It was incredible. At the time I was chasing a young lady whose clergyman father arranged the show at his church. It was remarkable: one of the greatest one man shows I have ever seen.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Colm has been dead a long time and long forgotten.

Evidently not, POD. If ever my Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visits, I hope he shows me people who remember me with as much affection as you showed here.

Best Wishes and Happy Christmas.

[BBMmk2]

One of my favourite novels!! Black Dyke Band have produced a cd that has various extracts from this book, with suitable music for it as well. Quite an intriguing disc!

[Mary Chambers]

In the 60s I witnessed at a one-man performance of A Christmas Carol by Emlyn Williams. It was incredible. At the time I was chasing a young lady whose clergyman father arranged the show at his church. It was remarkable: one of the greatest one man shows I have ever seen.

Emlyn Williams.....does anyone know of him now? I was a big fan of his plays in the 1950s when I was a teenager. After seeing a very good amateur perfomance of The Corn is Green I wrote to him and had a very kind reply, which unfortunately I haven't kept. I just cut off the autograph and stuck it in my autograph book. I never saw him in person.

This thread has inspired me to read A Christmas Carol again. It's one of those books I feel I know so well that it isn't necessary to read it - there are pieces of music like that, too. Always a good idea to refresh the memory and probably discover new aspects.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not imho to be missed is the British 1951 filmed version of the story, "Scrooge", starring Alastair Sim, showing on Channel 5 at 1 pm this coming Sunday. Some say no one has bettered AS in this role.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not imho to be missed is the British 1951 filmed version of the story, "Scrooge", starring Alastair Sim, showing on Channel 5 at 1 pm this coming Sunday. Some say no one has bettered AS in this role.

... but isn't this the "coloured" version rather than the far more atmospheric (to my mind) monochrome original?

[Serial_Apologist]

... but isn't this the "coloured" version rather than the far more atmospheric (to my mind) monochrome original?

RT presents two different stories on that one, ferney, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Nick Armstrong]

Not imho to be missed is the British 1951 filmed version of the story, "Scrooge", starring Alastair Sim, showing on Channel 5 at 1 pm this coming Sunday. Some say no one has bettered AS in this role.

I have been struggling to find time to contribute to this thread, and was going to add an enthusistic for the film. Yes, the colourised one is not as good but you can reset your telly to black and white for the duration. I am one who would say the fantastic Sim has never been bettered in the role! The sequence near the end where he shocks his housekeeper with his cheerfulness is matchless (her reactions are perfect too - I was almost sick as a child laughing at her shrieking and throwing her apron over her face)

The book is wonderful and oft-read in the Season. The scene of the Cratchits' Christmas meal - the goose, the pudding - is one of my favourites in all Dickens's output, the pathos applied deftly (e.g. the word 'cheapness' in "There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration.")

[aeolium]

I think it's a very imaginative ghost story and all the ghosts, including Marley, are wonderfully depicted (especially the last silent ghost with the eloquent finger). I think I still prefer The Haunted Man from his Christmas Books, and The Signalman as a ghost story. Alastair Sim is the only possible screen Scrooge.

BUT

Does Dickens bear a heavy responsibility for evangelising and bringing about the kind of Christmas that can make the heart sink: the heaps of food, the relentless jollity, the huge family gatherings (all there in the descriptions in the visitation by the Ghost of Christmas Present)? The kind of Christmas lampooned by Tom Lehrer in his Christmas Carol:

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say "when."
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

Dickens' story was intended as a broadside against the hard-hearted rich, and in defence of the neglected poor, but his social concern was never that consistent. It was the helpless, particularly poor and helpless children, that he really felt for (he had been one), but once they were able to cope for themselves then his attitude could be quite different. The crippled Tiny Tim could easily have grown up into a kind of Silas Wegg, who is first an object of humour and then of contempt. Dickens pleads for education to guard against the boy Ignorance in the last haunting, but a poor boy who with difficulty raises himself through education becomes the obsessive stalker and eventual murderer Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend.

I think it's for the powers of invention and description, and the characters that A Christmas Carol is to be remembered - not the message.