This was the first time I’d truly read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 📚. I know the story well but don’t remember ever going straight to the source.

Verdict: I really enjoyed it. I plan on it making it an annual Christmas read.

It was hard to read it without conjuring images from the various visual adaptions over the years. Especially the Disney version. It was Dickens' writing in particular that really drew me in beyond the story.

The poetry:

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.

The humor:

This was a great relief, because “Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by.

(The king’s songs from Hamilton started playing in my head at this line)

The critiques:

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us, and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

The societal callouts:

for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset