December Daily: holiday traditions

[resonant]

Prompt: wrabbit -- Favorite holiday traditions.

I celebrate Christmas, and for the last two years we've missed my favorite tradition: the annual read-aloud of "A Christmas Carol." This year when we were all together at Thanksgiving, I said, "Is it that I love this more than y'all do and you're ready to stop doing it?" and the spouse said, "No, I love it too, but I think we need to Start Early and Be Disciplined."

We have the big annotated version, which is kind of distracting, honestly, but it's nice to have words defined and amounts of money explained and allusions pointed out. There's a version that was written for readers' theater that can be read in one evening, and the full version is beautifully portioned out into five sections of readable length.

It benefits mightily from being read out loud, and even more from being read out loud repeatedly, so that the rest of the family chimes in on "I am a mortal, and liable to fall" and "a bachelor is a wretched outcast" and "They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me, putting it on him to be buried in" and "as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow."

"Why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?" is an all-purpose family lament, useful in a surprising number of circumstances.

If you want to watch a movie version, my hands-down favorite is the Muppet Christmas Carol. "Light the lamp, not the rat!"



So Scrooge is a schoolboy of apprentice age when his sister, Little Fan, comes to fetch him home -- probably around fourteen, almost certainly no older than sixteen. Little Fan is old enough to come in a carriage with no one with her but the groom, and to speak very well -- the absolute youngest I can imagine her being is four. So the largest plausible age gap there is twelve years.

Little Fan lives long enough to have one child, Scrooge's nephew Fred. I can't immediately find information on marriage in the 1840s when the book was published, but in the 1890s the average age of marriage for a woman was 22. So when Fred was born, Fan was probably 23, making Scrooge no older than 35.

Fred is newly married in the story, and the average age of marriage for men by 1890 was 26.

This means that by the time of the story, Scrooge was the ripe old age of ... 61.




Comment to leave me a prompt! Steal wrabbit's prompt if you want to do the meme yourself!

4 -- lunabee34 -- thoughts about flowers.
5 -- runpunkrun -- strong feelings about books.
6 -- castiron -- something that you're pleasantly surprised to have in your life.
7 -- mekare -- favorite fandom traditions.
8 -- armadillo1976 -- What is your comfort reading? Fic, high-brow literature, commercial fiction, whatever.
9 -- exceptinsects -- favorite romantic moments...in books, movies, fic, real life?
10 -- pauraque -- your favorite movies as a kid (or favorite kids' movies as an adult)
11 -- mific -- a winter's tale. Anything wintry, good or bad.
12 -- runpunkrun -- advice you've found useful
13 -- terminally_underwhelmed -- things that change, things that don't.
14 --
15 -- anitac588 -- Chris Evans.
16 --
17 -- ride_4ever -- birthdays
18 -- muccamukk -- Dwarvish things in your everyday life. (Moved from the 17th so ride_4ever could get the birthday date.)
19 --
20 -- copracat -- memory.
21 -- rhi -- cats.
22 --
23 -- laurenthemself -- Something spooky that's happened to you
24 --
25 --
26 --
27 --
28 --
29 --
30 --
31 --

Comments

[lunabee34]

What a lovely tradition!

[watersword]

Tell me about a memorable meal.

[goss]

my favorite tradition: the annual read-aloud of "A Christmas Carol."

Aw, I love this idea! What a cool family tradition. :) :)

[anelith]

That is a lovely tradition! It's been too long since we've seen the Muppet version. I'll have to find out if we can stream it.

[adafrog]

"Light the lamp, not the rat!"
My favorite part. *nods*

[wrabbit]

That's sweet! How long does the reading take?

[resonant]

The reader's theater version, which Dickens shortened for reading aloud, can be done in a couple of hours. The full novel takes ... mm, maybe four? You don't want to sit and do it all at once, and of course reading out loud takes longer than reading silently.