A Christmas Carol

I mentioned earlier that I try to make time to re-read this every year. I have a little Dover "Thrift Editions" copy that has the text of the 1851 printing. (Also, somewhere in a compilation volume, I have a shorter version that is the version that Dickens used for public readings)

When I was a student at University of Michigan, there was someone there who was a Dickens scholar and he would dress as Dickens every Christmas and give readings of "A Christmas Carol." I know I went one year to the Art Museum there to hear him; I think you had to apply in advance for tickets and it was sort of a lottery - not everyone who wanted to go got to. (He may also have come to Stockwell (one of the big women's dorms) when I lived there and done a reading; I vaguely remember someone in-the-person-of-Dickens making a joke about a "Well-stocked Stockwell" and me thinking, "Well, that's better than the joke my dad said guys used to make, calling it STACKED-well*")

(*Does anyone still use "stacked" as an adjective to describe a well-built woman? I suppose such a thing is considered sexist now)

Anyway. It's something I experience every year, usually in print form.

Last night, after getting home from the Jesus' Birthday Party at church I noticed that one of the movie versions of it was going to be on TCM - the 1951 Alistair Sim version.

There have been so many versions of this done over the years - some set in early Victorian London, as the book was, some re-set to modern America or different time periods or re-set with other motivations (I think there was one version in the sixties where Scrooge became Scrooge partly because of losing a son in WWII)

The first version I remember seeing was the Mr. Magoo version. (I think it was made in the early 60s - before my time but still being re-run on the old indy stations when I was a child). I didn't realize then that it was a famous story. In cartoon form, I know for sure Disney did a version (with Uncle Scrooge McDuck as Scrooge, naturally) and there was a Muppets version. (Not really a cartoon, but still....). It's probably one of the most "done" stories out there, and I've seen it done fairly badly. (Though not as badly as a few resets of the "It's a Wonderful Life" story, which in a way is an inversion of the Scrooge story - a man is visited by an angel not to reform him, but to convince him that he's really pretty OK after all)

Of the movie versions, I think the late-1930s version is most familiar to me -  with Reginald Owen (with Mr. and Mrs. Crachit played by married-in-real-life Gene and Kathleen Lockhart, and I think June Lockhart - better known to "moderns" as the mom from Lost in Space - was one of the daughters).

But I think the Sim version is in some ways better and more true to the book. While Sim does at times chew the scenery just a bit, it was still a very enjoyable production. (And even though I was a big fan of "The Avengers" (in reruns, of course) as a teen, I didn't even recognize Patrick MacNee as Young Marley). I like this version partly because it is in many ways so true to the book, and also Sim does seem "less infirm" than some who play Scrooge - you can imagine small children being afraid of him.

There's a much more recent version with a "more active" Scrooge that I love greatly as well - the Patrick Stewart version. First, because Patrick Stewart. But second, because they do follow the book fairly faithfully. (And there's a scene that never fails to make me tear up a bit, where the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to (what I assume is) a Welsh coal mine, and the miners - working in horrible, dangerous conditions - still come up out of the ground singing Silent Night, because it is Christmas.

Like any artwork, you see new things in it every time you look at it. This year I was struck by the comment of Marley's Ghost, about how individuals must go out among their fellow humans (presumably, in some charitable way - either actually giving charity, or at least treating others with kindness) in life, or, after death, their penitence is to observe all the good they cannot now do as spirits. That somehow, "beyond the veil" it becomes clearer to those who were rude or greedy in their natural lives just how wrong that was, and how they will spend eternity repenting of it.

Really, the whole story is one of repentance and, ultimately, redemption - Scrooge repents of his stingy ways (or at least, he does for this Christmas) and he is restored to relationship with his nephew (his only living relative, apparently) and his relationship with his clerk is somewhat restored. (And in the Sim movie version, we see at then end that not only did Tiny Tim not die, but that Scrooge became a sort of uncle to him...and we see Tim more or less restored to health).

I periodically need stories like that - stories of redemption, where something that was broken gets fixed. I suppose a lot of people do.