How to Read A Christmas Carol All in One Night

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By Philip Tallon

For the last ten years or so my wife and I have hosted a reading of A Christmas Carol during advent/peak consumer activity season. This is almost always our favorite night in December. We gather together a small group of friends and plow though the Dickens novella in one evening.

This is wonderful for a bunch of reasons.

Reason one is that this book is a total classic. Almost every paragraph has delightful turns of phrase and a profound insight into human life. Unlike a lot of classic stories that have been endlessly adapted, the original text of A Christmas Carol still supersedes all adaptations. As example, here's one bit of insightful, funny, and at a turn, politely creepy prose:

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. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building 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. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands....

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including—which is a bold word —the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley's face.

What more do I need to say? The book makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you wish you knew what "aldermen" meant, and it makes you want to be a better person. Boom.

Reason two why we love our yearly reading is that we have this one friend, James Mace (pictured), who reads with such joy and enthusiasm that we save the best parts (e.g. the dance at Fezziwig's) for him to read. If you can find yourself a James Mace, I recommend doing so. Point of fact, we need to find ourselves another James Mace, since the original has now moved to Scotland (as seen in the picture, standing in a castle).

Pictured: A Christmas Carol reading Bad-Ass, level 99.

Reason three this reading time is so memorable is that NOBODY does this kind of thing anymore. It just stands out from our normal evening habit of quietly fiddling with our laptops side-by-side and then quietly watching Parks and Recreation on Hulu on one of the aforementioned laptops. Reading aloud is entertaining but totally participatory. You get to hear each person's unique way of dramatizing the story, and in turn, get to bring the story to life for others. I suppose the other example of participatory entertainment is playing a board/video game. But when we read A Christmas Carol, everybody wins.

One word of warning, however. Reading this book aloud can be a bit tricky. Sometimes people get bogged down trying this for the first time. So here are a few suggestions for first-timers.

1. Start early and don't take long breaks. Reading A Christmas Carol takes about 3 hours and change. So plan on starting soon after dinner and the party breaking up not long after you finish. Possible alternative: There's a short version of A Christmas Carol Dickens himself created for public readings, apparently after getting bogged down with a 3+ hour reading one time. The abridged version is available here. I can't speak for the authorized edit's quality because we've never tried the shorter version. Mainly, we couldn't bear to do without the whole text. There just aren't any bad parts to the story. Also, abridgment is for sissies (like Charles Dickens).

Don't let the beard fool you.

2. Even if you normally drink at Christmas parties, don't drink too much during the reading. Do three shots of bourbon and then try to read this sentence and you'll understand: "The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold." (Disclaimer: I haven't tried this experiment.)

" 'Gah Hamburg?' Am I reading this correctly?...Oh, right, I'm wasted."

3. Let the good readers read more than the bad readers. I'm sure there's a politer way to say this, but I'll let you figure that out for yourself in the moment. Reading out loud is a skill you have to develop, and not everyone is awesome at it. Normally, less skilled readers either avoid reading or just read for a short bit then hand the book on to the next person. However, if you *know* that you will have some bad readers (or "less awesome readers") at the party who will insist on reading, here's a suggestion. You can get some cheap copies of the text on Amazon and assign parts. Then, cleverly give the bad readers the smaller parts. Free idea: Your friend with that terrible stutter can be Tiny Tim!

4. Don't be afraid to do voices. You feel silly doing them, but everybody loves it when you try on your bad English accent. I'm not kidding.

"I've gone from English, to Scottish, to Australian, to Pirate in one evening. It's like watching Troy."

5. My final piece of advice is just to go ahead and host a reading this season, even if you can only round up three or four people. A Christmas Carol is the perfect piece of literature to read together. It's a rich, funny, fully human, and also divine story. It's a story about poetic grace being offered to a nearly damned soul. And it also works a bit of grace on the readers as well. I promise you'll love it. And if you don't, well then, screw you.

God bless us every one.

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Philip Tallon is a guy who wrote a book. He's also on Twitter: @philiptallon.