Such a perfect story, and don’t be misled by modern secular film versions. I’ll let Prof Esolen get to the point:
“Dickens for his part was centrally concerned, in A Christmas Carol, with the gospels, as he was throughout his novels. “And he took a little child and set him in their midst”—that is the verse Peter Cratchit is reading to his smaller siblings when Scrooge sees them in the prospective future, while Tiny Tim’s crutches and brace are preserved lovingly in one corner of the poor room. “Unless ye become as little children,” said Jesus, “ye shall not enter the kingdom of God.” That is what happens to Scrooge, who awakes from his adventures and does not know what day it is. “I don’t know anything at all,” says he. “I am quite a baby!””
I recently acquired Dickens’ ‘. The Life of Our Lord’, written for his own children in 1849. It has botanical illustrations and a reproduction excerpt of the handwritten manuscript. You might like it!
Thanks for the recommendation :) I had come across this book as a public domain version but have not been able to get my hands on a nice physical copy yet.
I have been wanting for so long to introduce my family and friends to a reading of A Christmas Carol but have lacked the courage and organization to do it! Thank you so much for your practical help and encouragement to introduce this. The Dietz family and co. will be hearing from me quite soon.
Happy to hear that this post will provide added motivation and all the practical support you need to introduce your family to A Christmas Carol this year :)
I suppose it's not purely "unmachined" but our family watches the Muppet Christmas Carol every year....which I in all seriousness consider the best film adaptation. Faithful to the book and to the original message of the book (though for pity's sake, see if you can get your hands on the one with the musical number"when love is gone" or the central message of the movie is lost).
Our other tradition is to hold a tamalada, or a tamale making party. We're of German descent, not Hispanic, but we live in a Hispanic area and this has become absolutely embedded in our Christmas Eve. It takes all day, then we enjoy eating them together.
I really will have to take a look at the Muppet Christmas because several readers have noted it as the best film adaptation. We used to read a book by Gary Soto called "Too Many Tamales" during the Christmas season; lovely story that would go well with your annual tradition:)
What a lovely piece! We have six children, ages 3-13, and I very intentionally pare down our Christmas traditions to keep my own sanity. Even so, reading aloud “A Christmas Carol” together is a tradition we always make time for every year. I love it so much. [And I love your Dickens collection! It’s fun to find a kindred spirit who loves his books like I do.]
Happy to have found a kindred spirit :) I have grown to love the story more deeply over the years, and I cannot ever bear to read the last page (this part always goes to someone who will not burst into happy tears...). I highly recommend the version "for children to read out loud" as a family event; our kids always loved acting out different voices. I posted this early in the season to make allow time for people to integrate a reading without loosing their sanity :)
I’m going to share this with our co-op! Great idea to read it together. And there is something about repeated readings. I’ve had books I read as a child seem totally different as an adult, simply because you pull out such different themes in different stages and maturity levels.
Wonderful! We had an excellent time reading it together in our homeschool group (we had the parents take on roles and perform for the kids) and combined it with a Christmas cookie feast.
A part of the Dicken's quote, “We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world," is a perfect description of progressivism. In their hubristic dismissal of the past and glorification of the present, they confine themselves to the rapidly passing present. The future is unknown and, therefore, irrelevant.
As Hannah Arendt brilliantly presented, in The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think, she repeatedly described the fact that the thinking man is constantly crushed between the past and the future in the minuscule present.
Every year in nearby Weston, Vermont, there is a public reading of "A Christmas Carol" at the Old Parish Church. The parts of Scrooge and the narrator are played by actors from the Weston Playhouse company, the other characters are read by members of the community and visitors, anyone who can be convinced to participate at a moment's notice. The Old Parish Church is a gorgeous venue, perfect, in fact, and the production is always well attended during the Christmas in Weston event, each year on the first Saturday in December.
Sounds absolutely lovely! We have been to several public readings, some accompanied by wonderful choirs who performed between stages. Hope you will be able to enjoy the performance this year as well :)
Thanks for sharing this article. I've read A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, and am familiar with a Christmas Carol. Dickens possessed an uncanny ability to tell a story, weave characters into intricate plots, and present beautiful truths to his readers.
This was a lovely thing! I especially appreciated, and was tickled by, your reading suggestions for the introverts, ambiverts, and extroverts among us! You included us all! Thanks for all the wisdom here. A wonderful read.
Happy to hear you found it helpful :) As an extrovert I often forget how getting together with lots of people is not everyone's cup of tea and we wanted to make sure that practical suggestion take into consideration different personality types (although I am sure that there are even more distinctions than the three we included:)
I love your emphasis on the importance of repetition Ruth, I know fore well how important a strategy this is for my own learning. If we stopped to consider how repetition-infused our daily lives are (we see the same buildings people, animals, plants etc) and endeavoured to learn just one thing away about the different things we repeatedly see we would in time have an encyclopaedic knowledge of our localities.
Also, I have visited Rochester - the town in the UK most acquainted with Dickens. It is a wonderful place.
I was just reminded of the importance of repetition on a radio piece I chanced upon, where the speaker quoted research that young children need to be exposed to new words in context up to 80 times before fully comprehending and using it themselves. Repetition seems to have garnered some disdain (maybe because it sounds old or rote), but we are loosing depth of connection by continuously pursuing the new. We repeat the same walk in our neigbourhood almost daily, which has fostered a depth of appreciation for details and a sense of home and belonging. I have only briefly visited London (but made sure to pass by some of the places connected to Dickens such as The Old Curiosity Shop), and would love to have a chance to explore some more towns in the UK in future :)
Nov 14, 2023·edited Nov 14, 2023Liked by Ruth Gaskovski
I am excited to start the Advent wreath tradition this year. As a fellow Orthodox Christian, I've been looking for a wreath to accommodate our 40-day advent, and decided to try the cradle-to-cross wreath from the Keeping Company. It looks great right now taking up some space on our kitchen table, surrounded by freshly picked greenery. I'll do one tea light candle for each day, except for six days where I'll use some tall green and red taper candles I found at a thrift store - for Entry of the Theotokos (Nov 21), St. Catherine (Nov 24 - my namesday), St Nicholas (Dec 6), St. Herman/St. Lucia (Dec 13), Sunday of the Forefathers (Dec 17), and Christmas.
I grew up with the Advent wreath tradition in Switzerland (where fresh green wreaths with red candles are even sold on the daily market square). We have varied our advent arrangements from candles decorated with a pine cone wreath to a long stone slab decorated with greenery and candles. Your idea sounds lovely:)
Thank you for the tremendous thought and effort you put into articulating these ideas and giving your readers actionable steps. I’m grateful for all of your work!
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Being in the evergreen state, we end up with somewhat frequent power outages - and I'm shocked by my reliance on energy when that happens, every darn time. The power will be out and I'll still flip light switches habitually, or go to turn on the radio.
The Dickens connection is so apt. I'm also often reminded of the Lilliputians tying down Gulliver, when I ponder technology in our lives...
Thanks for your note Kristin :) This was actually the first time that we had a power outage for this long, and I was surprised how all our normal actions seemed to simply stop. I'll be buying more candles and flashlights (and making sure that the boys don't get to them for experiments of some sort...). Dickens seemed to flow naturally from the candlelight, and we'll be trying to reduce our technology use especially in the evenings, to allow us all to slow down.
Such a perfect story, and don’t be misled by modern secular film versions. I’ll let Prof Esolen get to the point:
“Dickens for his part was centrally concerned, in A Christmas Carol, with the gospels, as he was throughout his novels. “And he took a little child and set him in their midst”—that is the verse Peter Cratchit is reading to his smaller siblings when Scrooge sees them in the prospective future, while Tiny Tim’s crutches and brace are preserved lovingly in one corner of the poor room. “Unless ye become as little children,” said Jesus, “ye shall not enter the kingdom of God.” That is what happens to Scrooge, who awakes from his adventures and does not know what day it is. “I don’t know anything at all,” says he. “I am quite a baby!””
https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/24/a-christmas-carol-for-our-times/
Thanks for sharing Esolen's article Adrian! The story, in its written version, has a potential to move hearts more than many a sermon would...
I recently acquired Dickens’ ‘. The Life of Our Lord’, written for his own children in 1849. It has botanical illustrations and a reproduction excerpt of the handwritten manuscript. You might like it!
Thanks for the recommendation :) I had come across this book as a public domain version but have not been able to get my hands on a nice physical copy yet.
I have been wanting for so long to introduce my family and friends to a reading of A Christmas Carol but have lacked the courage and organization to do it! Thank you so much for your practical help and encouragement to introduce this. The Dietz family and co. will be hearing from me quite soon.
Happy to hear that this post will provide added motivation and all the practical support you need to introduce your family to A Christmas Carol this year :)
I suppose it's not purely "unmachined" but our family watches the Muppet Christmas Carol every year....which I in all seriousness consider the best film adaptation. Faithful to the book and to the original message of the book (though for pity's sake, see if you can get your hands on the one with the musical number"when love is gone" or the central message of the movie is lost).
Our other tradition is to hold a tamalada, or a tamale making party. We're of German descent, not Hispanic, but we live in a Hispanic area and this has become absolutely embedded in our Christmas Eve. It takes all day, then we enjoy eating them together.
I really will have to take a look at the Muppet Christmas because several readers have noted it as the best film adaptation. We used to read a book by Gary Soto called "Too Many Tamales" during the Christmas season; lovely story that would go well with your annual tradition:)
What a lovely piece! We have six children, ages 3-13, and I very intentionally pare down our Christmas traditions to keep my own sanity. Even so, reading aloud “A Christmas Carol” together is a tradition we always make time for every year. I love it so much. [And I love your Dickens collection! It’s fun to find a kindred spirit who loves his books like I do.]
Happy to have found a kindred spirit :) I have grown to love the story more deeply over the years, and I cannot ever bear to read the last page (this part always goes to someone who will not burst into happy tears...). I highly recommend the version "for children to read out loud" as a family event; our kids always loved acting out different voices. I posted this early in the season to make allow time for people to integrate a reading without loosing their sanity :)
I’m going to share this with our co-op! Great idea to read it together. And there is something about repeated readings. I’ve had books I read as a child seem totally different as an adult, simply because you pull out such different themes in different stages and maturity levels.
Wonderful! We had an excellent time reading it together in our homeschool group (we had the parents take on roles and perform for the kids) and combined it with a Christmas cookie feast.
This is tremendous, Ruth and Peco! What a wonderful practical example -- and thank you for the introvert/ambivert/extrovert suggestions.
I did not want to overwhelm people with "conviviality", and thus made sure to keep your important question in mind :)
A part of the Dicken's quote, “We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world," is a perfect description of progressivism. In their hubristic dismissal of the past and glorification of the present, they confine themselves to the rapidly passing present. The future is unknown and, therefore, irrelevant.
As Hannah Arendt brilliantly presented, in The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think, she repeatedly described the fact that the thinking man is constantly crushed between the past and the future in the minuscule present.
Every year in nearby Weston, Vermont, there is a public reading of "A Christmas Carol" at the Old Parish Church. The parts of Scrooge and the narrator are played by actors from the Weston Playhouse company, the other characters are read by members of the community and visitors, anyone who can be convinced to participate at a moment's notice. The Old Parish Church is a gorgeous venue, perfect, in fact, and the production is always well attended during the Christmas in Weston event, each year on the first Saturday in December.
Sounds absolutely lovely! We have been to several public readings, some accompanied by wonderful choirs who performed between stages. Hope you will be able to enjoy the performance this year as well :)
Dibs on the ghost of Christmas present.
Thanks for sharing this article. I've read A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, and am familiar with a Christmas Carol. Dickens possessed an uncanny ability to tell a story, weave characters into intricate plots, and present beautiful truths to his readers.
Keep up the good work!
This was a lovely thing! I especially appreciated, and was tickled by, your reading suggestions for the introverts, ambiverts, and extroverts among us! You included us all! Thanks for all the wisdom here. A wonderful read.
Happy to hear you found it helpful :) As an extrovert I often forget how getting together with lots of people is not everyone's cup of tea and we wanted to make sure that practical suggestion take into consideration different personality types (although I am sure that there are even more distinctions than the three we included:)
I love your emphasis on the importance of repetition Ruth, I know fore well how important a strategy this is for my own learning. If we stopped to consider how repetition-infused our daily lives are (we see the same buildings people, animals, plants etc) and endeavoured to learn just one thing away about the different things we repeatedly see we would in time have an encyclopaedic knowledge of our localities.
Also, I have visited Rochester - the town in the UK most acquainted with Dickens. It is a wonderful place.
I was just reminded of the importance of repetition on a radio piece I chanced upon, where the speaker quoted research that young children need to be exposed to new words in context up to 80 times before fully comprehending and using it themselves. Repetition seems to have garnered some disdain (maybe because it sounds old or rote), but we are loosing depth of connection by continuously pursuing the new. We repeat the same walk in our neigbourhood almost daily, which has fostered a depth of appreciation for details and a sense of home and belonging. I have only briefly visited London (but made sure to pass by some of the places connected to Dickens such as The Old Curiosity Shop), and would love to have a chance to explore some more towns in the UK in future :)
I am excited to start the Advent wreath tradition this year. As a fellow Orthodox Christian, I've been looking for a wreath to accommodate our 40-day advent, and decided to try the cradle-to-cross wreath from the Keeping Company. It looks great right now taking up some space on our kitchen table, surrounded by freshly picked greenery. I'll do one tea light candle for each day, except for six days where I'll use some tall green and red taper candles I found at a thrift store - for Entry of the Theotokos (Nov 21), St. Catherine (Nov 24 - my namesday), St Nicholas (Dec 6), St. Herman/St. Lucia (Dec 13), Sunday of the Forefathers (Dec 17), and Christmas.
I grew up with the Advent wreath tradition in Switzerland (where fresh green wreaths with red candles are even sold on the daily market square). We have varied our advent arrangements from candles decorated with a pine cone wreath to a long stone slab decorated with greenery and candles. Your idea sounds lovely:)
Thank you for the tremendous thought and effort you put into articulating these ideas and giving your readers actionable steps. I’m grateful for all of your work!
Thanks Susie - Happy to hear you found it useful :)
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Being in the evergreen state, we end up with somewhat frequent power outages - and I'm shocked by my reliance on energy when that happens, every darn time. The power will be out and I'll still flip light switches habitually, or go to turn on the radio.
The Dickens connection is so apt. I'm also often reminded of the Lilliputians tying down Gulliver, when I ponder technology in our lives...
Thanks for your note Kristin :) This was actually the first time that we had a power outage for this long, and I was surprised how all our normal actions seemed to simply stop. I'll be buying more candles and flashlights (and making sure that the boys don't get to them for experiments of some sort...). Dickens seemed to flow naturally from the candlelight, and we'll be trying to reduce our technology use especially in the evenings, to allow us all to slow down.
Haven’t read A Christmas Carol in ages. You have inspired me to rectify that! 🎄😊
..even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah! :)