For the first time in around ten years, I recently re-read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with a group of friends, and I was surprised at how much I’d mis-remembered or plain forgotten about it. Mostly, I was reminded how beautifully it was written and just how dark, powerful, and revolutionary a story it is. Dickens catches a lot of flack—rightly so, at times—for “padding” his stories, but A Christmas Carol is lean and efficient. Inspired by that re-read, my wife and I watched this movie tonight, The Man Who Invented Christmas, a somewhat fictionalized account of Dickens’ conception and composition of A Christmas Carol in just about six weeks. This…
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Have Yourself a Very Troubling Christmas
It’s that time of year again. During the holidays, we gather with family, friends, and pets. We hang out with folks we haven’t seen since last year, don sweaters that have inexplicably shrunk over the past eleven months, and eat and drink like we have no sense of propriety. The end of the calendar year is also packed with a lineup of Christmas-themed movies and television specials. By their final acts, most of these programs will leave you feeling warm and optimistic about humanity, but it’s easy to miss some of the more disturbing undertones and subplots. Kris Kringle drops the ball in The Year Without a Santa Claus, Frosty…
