Concerned with the plight of children living in poverty,
Charles Dickens wrote a short novella, titled A Christmas Carol. First
published in 1843, this story tells of a miserly old man visited by three
ghosts. A Christmas Carol remains popular — having never been out
of print —– and has been adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and
other media.
The tale begins
on a "cold, bleak, biting" Christmas Eve exactly seven years after
the death of Scrooge’s business partner, Jacob Marley, Scrooge, an old miser, is
established within the first stave as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping,
scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" He hates Christmas, calling it
"humbug"; he refuses his nephew Fred's Christmas dinner invitation,
and rudely turns away two gentlemen who seek a donation from him to provide a
Christmas dinner for the poor. His only "Christmas gift" is allowing
his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay –
which he does only to keep with social custom, Scrooge, considering it "a
poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December!"
This led to one of the best-selling, most-told Christmas
stories of all time.
Many other stories followed by other authors through history:
The Little Match Girl
by Hans Christian Anderson
The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry
A Letter from Santa
Claus by Mark Twain
Papa Panov’s Special
Christmas by Leo Tolstoy
Just to name a few. The website http://osr.org/christmas/20-famous-christmas-stories/
lists 20 of the most popular.
My family prefers The
Night Before Christmas. Which stories does your family enjoy this time of
year?
I love A Christmas Carol, and we all loved The Night Before Christmas, but my favorite is Gift of the Magi. To me it represents the true meaning of love in being willing to give up what means the most to you in order to give someone else an expression of your love for them. That's what Jesus did. He gave up His life to show me how much He loves me.
ReplyDeleteWhite Christmas is a must see for us each year. We watched it together as a couple for the first time at Jerry's home on Christmas Eve. It's been our tradition for the last 48 years.
ReplyDeleteWhen our kids were young (some 30 years ago) we watched all the regular Christmas TV shows- Charlie Brown, Rudolph, etc. We also read the same stories in books. Thanks for your post and most of those stories you listed, I had not even heard of. sm wileygreen1(at)yahoo(dot)com
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