Welcome to the Christmas season at SteynOnline. If you're short of gift ideas, we have some bargains galore among this year's Steynamite Christmas specials - and we will have a full panoply of seasonal programming in the days ahead, starting with this Sunday's Song of the Week.
As I've emphasized since we launched The Mark Steyn Club this summer, our regular content will always be free to everyone around the world, but we are admitting Club members to a few experimental features which, in the event they're sufficiently non-incompetent, we may eventually make more widely available. Tales for Our Time is our series of monthly audio adventures. So far we've presented radio serializations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H G Wells, Joseph Conrad, Anthony Hope, Rudyard Kipling and Scott Fitzgerald. You can find them all here.
But it's the holiday season and so I thought we'd spend some time with a book that, as I discuss in my introduction, played a large part in the contemporary view of Christmas. Indeed, it helped re-configure the English Yuletide from the old rural "twelve days of Christmas" into the more focused family celebrations we know today. In this first episode of Dickens' tale, we meet a man who would become one of the best known characters in literature - Ebenezer Scrooge:
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did...
Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices...The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
If you're familiar with movies or musicals of this tale but not the original, we hope you'll enjoy this serialization. We'll be running this famous story in nightly episodes, and you can either enjoy it as a book at bedtime twenty minutes before you lower your lamp - or pile up the chapters and listen to the whole thing on a longish car journey come Monday. I always like reading stories, and I did do a little of it professionally a zillion years ago. So, if these fancies tickle you, we may release them as audio books on CD or Audible a ways down the road. But for the moment it's an exclusive bonus for Mark Steyn Club members. To hear Part One of A Christmas Carol, prefaced by my own introduction to the story, please click here and log-in.
We launched The Mark Steyn Club this summer, and I'm very touched by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Cook County to the Cook Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. As I said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone - all my columns, audio interviews, video content, all our movie features and songs of the week. None of it's going behind a paywall, because I want it out there in the world, being read and being heard and being viewed, and maybe changing an occasional mind somewhere along the way.
If you've enjoyed our monthly Steyn Club radio serials and you're looking for a Yuletide present for someone special, I hope you'll consider our limited-time-only Christmas Gift Membership, which includes your choice of a personally autographed book or CD set from yours truly. Aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products - plus this year's Santa Steyn Christmas specials;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly (we'll be doing another on Monday, at 5pm US Eastern);
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, SteynPosts, and our other video content;
~My new quarterly newsletter The Clubbable Steyn;
~Our new video series of classic poetry;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that seasonal-offer Christmas Gift Membership.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike this eighth Tale for Our Time, or consider my reading of it a check that no bank would honor, then feel free to comment away below. And do join us tomorrow for Part Two of A Christmas Carol.
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27 Member Comments
Mark, I am enjoying something of a binge listen on this one. Outstanding talent giving so many characters distinctive voices. I want to say that you have managed to enlist someone for the announcement and sign off for all the Tales of the most charming and mellifluous voice. Perhaps I have missed it, but I applaud her work which just adds a delightful touch to every episode and hope she is given credit.
Hello Mark,
I really like this audio series. I noticed, that for each audio tale, there is an individual melody that matches the time/them of the audio-tale.
Could you please post the name of the music somewhere?
I would just like to thank you for bringing one of my all time favorite Christmas stories (save the very story for which we celebrate) to the Club. All the more reason to enjoy giving a few 'Christmas Gift Memberships' to my friends!
Wishing you and your family a blessed Christmas season!
When I was growing up we had a recording (33 1/3 rpm) of the Christmas Carol narrated by Ronald Colman. I don't remember who played the other parts. On the flip side was a recording of Mr. Pickwick's Christmas (from the Pickwick Papers), all done by Charles Laughton. Two excellent tales of Christmas! We listened every year as family.
As you suggested in your intro, the Christian message underlies and permeates the entire story one way or another, even if somewhat indirectly. And the depth of insight is interesting, and I'm afraid absent in our current empty culture.
Thank you, Mark. This is Mrs. B's favorite Christmas tale.
I'm always trying to find new versions to show her, and this will save me for this year.
A favourite Dickens piece, particularly for those of us who were introduced to English literature in school. There used to be a restaurant called Gad's Hill Place in Manotick, Ontario, where a fellow (can't recall the name) who looked like Dickens and sounded like Dickens in my mind gave a dinner theatre abridged reading of A Christmas Carol, to the great delight of diners present, past, and future.
Thanks for running this feature Mark. Your site continues to evolve into,... we know not what, perhaps a Grand Theatre Arts, Books Mass Media Department Store (Marky's on Fifth) where one can find all that is required for the serious shopper, and be well served by the employees who wear the white gloves, operate the elevator and open the door to the lounge.
Was there ever a better Scrooge than Mr Magoo?
Your introduction is the better part of the program when the listener is already familiar with the story. The history of its creation is marvelous to learn. Keep up your good work.
Next, if you dare, Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. TYVM!!!!
Over US Thanksgiving weekend we went to see the movie "The Man Who Invented Christmas". It is the story of Charles Dickens and his writing of A Christmas Carol. Our party consisted of relatives aged 26-64 and all really enjoyed it. It is a good, clean and entertaining picture much unlike the usual fare at the theatres.
If you can find it playing near you I highly recommend it for a good night out.
We even went to dinner before hand,how very retro of us....
A favorite! In the 90's I was in charge of an advanced research team for HP inkjet technology, and as a demonstration of a new business concept (books printed on demand) we created an inkjet edition of "A Christmas Carol" from the Dickens original text (online at Gutenberg Press), customized for each recipient since it was a digital print exercise, and gave it to all of our managers, on up to Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. They both loved it. Dave asked us if we could print off a few for his buddies, we said yes, and we made another dozen for people from the list he sent that included George Schulz, Jay Keyworth, Gordon Moore, George HW Bush... it was a fun project. I sometimes wonder if any of those books survive; Dave Packard died less than six months later. At least one HP VP was relieved, because Dave was pressuring him to invest in making an on demand book printing business a reality.
As to the story, I've always wondered why such a cheapskate as Scrooge would "ice his office in the dog days". Even as a cold, calculating soul, it seems a waste of precious money.
Nice little bit of insider history there. Fun to see that his buddies were Shultz, Bush, and Gordon Moore. Just like the humbug, I mean humble, beginnings of this story, it's fascinating that so much grew out of that little garage. It was too bad to hear that some irreplaceable artifacts from HP's early days were lost in the Santa Rosa fire.
This is the first tales for our time I've listened to. If they're all this good, then I've been missing out. Perfect for Christmas time!
Jamie, welcome aboard! And yes, they are all this good, you really should listen to them all.
Spectacular reading. I await with anticipation the upcoming installments where the inevitable thaw in the cold darkness of Scrooge begins.
Mark...It's your birthday but we're the ones receiving the present. Thank you. Dickens, especially 'A Christmas Carol', is always a welcome read or listen when the it's cold outside and the days get shorter. And it looks back to a time when Christmas meant something more than a overcommercialized shopping season or a politically incorrect term not to be spoken.
Any way to get these episodes on iTunes, like as a podcast? It's not convenient to sit at the computer to listen.
I don't know if it would work with your setup, but I listen on my phone by clicking the file in a browser window. You might also be able to download the downloadable file and transfer it to iTunes and on to your device from there.
By happy chance I am watching the superb 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol" with the great Alastair Sim, the best Scrooge ever. It's a tale that needs British actors.
If you like "A Christmas Carol", you might like "Jacob T. Marley" by R. William Bennett.
I am very much looking forward to this tale. Years ago I saw Patrick Stewart in a one-man show of this play. I think you will give him a run for his money reading the original text. Your accent is far more suited to Dickens than it is for Scott Fitzgerald anyway. Thanks so much.
I had an inkling this might show up as December's tale, and I'm glad to hear it. Come in and know me better, man!
No kidding! Mark the mentalist!
Very best Christmas wishes to Mark, and to all the members of the Mark Steyn Club around the world.
God bless us, every one!
Ahhh, this is so special, Dave! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to read your wish. I'm getting the tree decorated as I read your message! I was just dragging my feet about the house and was wondering if I have the energy to get going with the boxes of ornaments. Then I see that Dickens's "A Christmas Carol"' is on the Tales for Our Times hearth, so suddenly I'm bursting with excitement. Ooh, I can't contain myself. Same back to you and yes, around the world!
Thank you Dave. Having modeled much of my own life on Scrooge, and not wanting to get kicked out of Steyn's Club, I feel obligated to warm the "low temperature" enough to wish you a Merry Christmas in return. And an extra lump of coal for all the other members in the clubhouse on Christmas Eve.
Well Sam, a Scrooge follower you may be, but your message gave me a good laugh - and I call that a nice Christmas present.