Wonderful Things Come From a Story Related

I have loved A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens ever since I was a child. I know this is a common statement and there is a myriad of people who say the same. As a post World War II American, it’s common that I first experienced A Christmas Carol in an entertainment form well before ever reading it. Actually, I had yet to learn beyond the alphabet the first time I saw A Christmas Carol. But at five years old, when I saw my first version, I was hooked. It became and has remained my favorite Christmas story and it never gets old. As I grew up and eventually read the novella, my love for the story was stronger (Dickens became and remains one of my favorite novelists although Evelyn Waugh is my all-time favorite English writer). Along with it, my passion for adaptations only grew. Whenever any version was broadcast on television, that was how I spent my time; it was one of the highlights during the Christmas season for me.

It was the VHS / VCR era, after I was finally able to get my first VCR (right after Thanksgiving), when I started my personal collection of various versions of A Christmas Carol.  This was also the time when the average VHS movie cost $30 – 50 retail, which was a steep price at the time; so obviously, I was recording them as they were broadcast. This was when I began to realize how many dramatizations there were. As the cost of VHS movies steadily dropped, it was wonderful replacing my home-recorded versions with better quality retail ones. Even better: versions I had never seen before and rarely shown began to become available. No longer was it enough to merely wait for whatever version would be shown on whatever date, time, and channel could be discovered. It became an obsession to watch every version I could obtain during the season. As my collection grew, it became hard to watch as many as I could when my free time would allow. There were even times I would do marathon watching of one right after the other on Christmas Eve and Day. In all the years I’ve been doing this, this is the first I’m attempting to watch them with a semblance of a plan. This year, I’m watching at least one a night starting at Advent (December 1st). This year, I don’t anticipate getting them all in, but there will be a lot and it will be personally satisfying.  Although I also have and view many of the non-traditional adaptations, spin-offs, continuations, etc., I personally prefer the standard story set in early Victorian London. I have really liked some of the non-traditional takes and will probably be including a couple. I have also loved the many other presentations: the radio shows (I have a few), ballet, opera, stage shows (both non-musical and musical), and even comics! But in this space, I’m pretty much going to be sticking with the standard movie, be it cinema or television, live-action or animated.

I’ve wanted to do this as something fun for a few years now. Many years ago, thanks to our friend The Internet, I learned that I was far from unique in not only my love for Dickens’ story, but there were other crazy folks that collected and watched the ever growing repertoire of adaptations. In the earlier days of the web, I had a very small, personal experiment site dedicated solely to available VHS versions. It was a sub-site to a once very popular, larger site dedicated to a show I’m obsessed with (the site’s been gone since mid-2004). There are even now scholars that have devoted time and study to the A Christmas Carol phenomenon.

I am not a critic and have no wish to try to appear as one. I will be briefly writing about each version I watch with my personal perceptions or opinions. As I stated previously, this is a semblance of a plan. I have no predetermined order I will be viewing most versions, although I do have personal traditions of watching particular versions on Christmas Eve and Christmas night.