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A Christmas Carol (Chiltern Classic)

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The Christmas classic that everyone knows – even if they haven’t read it. It's quite short, and at some levels quite an easy read, but there is plenty of depth, so I think it's worth reading it in a thoughtful and slightly leisurely way. After Scrooge leaves his office, there’s this: “Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed.” I figured there’d be a whole couple of paragraphs at the restaurant. Nope! Davidson, Ewan. "Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)". Screenonline. British Film Institute . Retrieved 10 January 2017. Canción de Navidad (2009). Un lindo film animado hecho por Disney. Una razonablemente fiel adaptación, con varias citas directas y estrellas como Carrey, Oldman y Firth actuando las voces. Destacan efectos especiales y escenas de acción que no necesariamente van bien con el libro. Recomendable mayormente para pequeños, y adultos con corazón de niño que no resientan desviarse un poco del texto. There are other links too: three people profiting from the spoils of the dead man (like the Roman soldiers at the cross, albeit they cast lots to decide who got what) and Peter Cratchit reading from the Bible in Christmas yet to come.

The chill of the season seems to emanate from Scrooge himself. "External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty." In the past I have viewed the temporal structure of the tale (ghost past, ghost present, ghost future) as an effective but obvious device. But the more I think about it, the more profound it seems, psychologically and spiritually. This, after all, is the pattern of every true conversion, the manner in which we grow in sympathy toward our fellow human beings: we reflect upon the emotionally charged sense impressions of the past, observe their consequences for good or ill manifested in the present, and then—on the basis of these observations—we make a decision to act in a new way, a way which draws us grow closer to love. Certainly St. Augustine would have understood, for it was how he envisioned the Trinity, as a model of love in action: memory, understanding, and will. Just one more if you have time? Great. A bit too much fourth wall breaking here today, sorry for that. Ebenezer Scrooge, the very definition of grumpy miserliness, gets a second chance at figuring out what's really important in life, with the help of some ghosts who give him an unforgettable version of "This is Your Life." In 1223 St. Francis of Assisi started live nativities in Italy and incorporated songs and sayings of good wishes into his Christmas services. The new carols in spoken languages spread across Europe.so let us follow scrooges (eventual) example, when he says ‘i will honour christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year,' and allow the christmas spirit be something we not only feel this time of year, but always. The whole point of the book is that he changes for the better, and right from the start there are hints that he wasn’t and isn’t irredeemably bad. For example, he never removed Marley’s name from the sign above his office. I don’t think the reason was solely parsimony because during and after the ghostly encounters, we see different aspects of Scrooge, surely exposed by the ghosts, not actually created by them. So maybe part of the reason for leaving the name was a fondness for the memory of his friend and partner - a link to happier times. Scrooge's chambers are "a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of buildings 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 forgotten the way out again." In addition to being hard of heart, Scrooge is a man with a deliberate philosophy of self-exoneration. It consists of two principles: 1) taxpayers fund the poor houses and prisons, thereby discharging in full their obligation to all of their fellow human beings, and 2) death by starvation, although it may seem regrettable, is actually a positive good as proven by science (because Malthus!), and relieves the rest of us of the burden of a surplus population. This philosophy is the shield that protects Scrooge from feeling the pains of sympathy and compassion. This year, we didn’t put up a Christmas tree, and I haven’t been feeling the “Christmas spirit.” But this book squarely right sided the situation.

The book opens with wonderful bathos, “ Marley was dead, to begin with.” So right from the outset it is clear it is not a straightforward factual tale. Apart from the famous ghosts (of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come), which were not unusual in literature of the time, it has time travel and parallel worlds, where each significant choice leads to a branching of reality, which is a staple of much great sci fi. Not such a typical Victorian novel after all. carry the reader through the story, daring us to disbelieve in the events which follow, and the ghastly phantoms which are about to appear. The author's voice is there at every turn. One part which gave this reader a bit of a jolt, is the arrival of the first Spirit when the curtains of Scrooge's bed were drawn aside. He was thus face to face with the apparition, Gordon, Alexander; McConnell, Anita (2008). "Elwes [ formerly Meggott], John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/8776. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) He felt a tremendous sense of betrayal and humiliation”, says Slater, “which gave him a hugely powerful identification with the children of the poor, because he’d been there himself.” The Christmas cynic says that the season is hypocritical, and that even those people who volunteer, give money, and donate food and gifts only do so once a year.Scroggie was unlike Scrooge in nature, and was described as "a well-known hedonist who loved wine, women, and parties... a dandy and terrible philanderer who had several sexual liaisons which made him the talk of the town... a jovial and kindly man". [43] The first is pale, shadowy (long forgotten?) and “ like a child; yet not so like a child as an old man” (the child is father of the man?).

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