New Tradition: Annual reading of A Christmas Carol

December 22, 2016 - By

This week I read the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. This book is out of copyright, and you can get a digital copy free here.

My favourite excerpts:

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”


“The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much;”

The “celebrated herd in the poem” was this; “Written in March” by William Wordsworth

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is whooping- anon-anon:
There’s joy in the mountains;
There’s life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

Merry Christmas, God bless Us, Every One!

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This post was written by ArleyM