“Bide the end!” December 24, 2010 When I was in the sixth grade,
our teacher, Mrs. Minor Merchant, assigned two other students
and me to write a short play based on Charles Dickens’ novella,
“A Christmas Carol.” I had never read the story before then, but
I have read it every Christmas season since, as I am in the
midst of reading it now. In the meantime, I became a fan of
Dickens in general, and have read all of his novels and many of
his other works — some of them over and over again. Of course, I
have also watched adaptations of his work for the screen and the
stage. Most of Dickens’ work is too expansive to be recreated in
another medium except in sharply truncated form. That’s to be
understood, but I have noticed that among the elements of his
storytelling that usually fall by the wayside is the intensity
of the anger with which he wrote — and that is in no case more
than true than in the case of “A Christmas Carol.” This tale,
published in 1843, reputedly changed the way Christmas was
observed in Great