A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Classic.  I have enjoyed trying classics out since I was never forced to read them in high school or college, well not the cool ones like Bronte or Austen or Dickens.  This year it so happened that I didn’t have anything to read the week of Christmas and I realized that I had never read A Christmas Carol, a classic in all sense of  the word.  I have seen so many adaptations of this story in film version that I cannot keep count, but I have never even attempted to read the book.  I have seen it live, a somewhat poorly performed musical rendition in Branson MO many years ago.  I have watched the Mickey’s Christmas Carol, The Bill Murray’s Scrooged, and within the last year or so I saw Jim Carey’s A Christmas Carol, animated, sort of.  I have grown up around this story, but never read one of Dickens’ words and I have not known the story from reading it with my own eyes. 

I loved it.  It is the story of redemption, a story of second chances.  I think of all of the wasted years, Scrooge missed all sorts of chances throughout his life and will have to make up for all of his poor decisions late in life, but he got a second chance.  When I think about it, we all get a second chance each morning when we wake up.  We have another chance to live life to the fullest and how many of us waste it.  We waste it by being lazy, not thinking of others, or our search for money, career, or possessions.  I think that Dickens’ gives us a great reminder that even if we are not visited by spirits in the night, we can still wake up and live each day like it’s our last.  Keep Reading my Friends!