Stave One: Marley’s Ghost
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There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.
There is no pleasure half so comforting as being inside on a cold winter day reading a good story aloud to an appreciative audience. Oh, it’s an out-dated mode of entertainment, no mistake about it. Still, it’s good to carry on the old traditions, and this is surely one of the oldest. Marley may be dead, but the tradition of reading aloud is happily alive.
“If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
There never was such an unrepentant old twister as Ebenezer Scrooge. Greedy, selfish, spiteful, miserly. Thoroughly and comprehensively despicable. That Scrooge was despicable must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story. It must be very distinctly understood in order to appreciate the astonishing miracle of Ebenezer Scrooge redeemed and laughing.
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.
In Birmingham Town Hall on the 27th day of December in the year 1852, Charles Dickens gave his first ever public reading. What he read, of course, was the story of Scrooge and Marley, the three Spirits and the Family Cratchit. Three days later he read the same story to an audience of ‘working people.’ A hundred and fifty-five years have passed and the story is still being read aloud. Something wonderful has indeed come from the story.
…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
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