A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I’m sure I’d read A Christmas Carol before, but it was a long time ago—like, more than twenty years ago—so I figured the time was right for a re-read. I remembered the story, of course, having seen Mickey’s Christmas Carol and maybe also The Muppet Christmas Carol: Marley’s ghost, and the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I was pleased that the tone of the original was less sappy than I feared it might have been; Scrooge and his change of heart are just heart-warming. I’d also forgotten some of the great details, like when the Ghost of Christmas Present arrives and Scrooge sees his dreary living room transformed: “The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there.” I love the contrast between the Christmas Eve cold and fog and darkness and the bright snowy sunshine of Christmas Day, and I also love this description of where Scrooge lives, from early in the book: “They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of a building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again.”