My Favorite
There are just a handful of stories that have truly stood the test of time and held a place in our common culture of Christmas. You could place Rudolph, Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch, and maybe even A Christmas Vacation in the lexicon. We all know them backwards and forwards. We watch them each year and enjoy them like we did as children.
But the top of the Christmas story list has to be occupied by A Christmas Carol. Essentially a short story that Charles Dickens cranked out over the course of a few weeks in the fall of 1843, it has been re-made and re-made and re-made so many times in plays, film, and TV, that it is has become difficult to even remember what parts were in what adaptation. Was that scene with Bill Murray, Michael Cain, George C. Scott, or Scrooge McDuck?
Because obviously I am a huge book nerd, as evidenced by this blog site, every few years or so I sit down and read the original. It doesn't take very long. My copy is 68 pages. The $1 price tag is still on it. And every time I read it, I am reminded that there are just some parts that intentionally get left out of all the movies and cartoons. They all involve the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Here are the creepiest parts:
1) The part where Scrooge watches the thieves sell his possessions, the last of the thieves stole the shirt off his dead body, and switched it with a cheaper shirt.
2) When Scrooge asks "Is any person in town, that feels emotion caused by this man's death?", he is shown a family who he was about to foreclose on. When the word of Scrooge's death comes, they all get really happy.
3) Scrooge has to also stand over the vision of his own corpse, laying on his bed, bedroom ripped apart by thieves, as animals that want to eat him scratch at the door.
4) That part where the Cratchit's are so sad? Tiny Tim's dead body is still upstairs in his bed. Bob goes up to sit by it.
Merry Christmas!!!! God Bless Us, Every One!
