Between now and Christmas Eve I’ll be reading a chapter a day of the Charles Dickens holiday classic, “A Christmas Carol” — a timeless tale of love and renewal in keeping with the story of Christmas itself.
Dickens divided his yuletide novella into five parts, which he referred to as “staves” rather than as chapters. I’d often wondered about the meaning of the word stave, which typically refers to “a vertical wooden post or plank in a building or other structure.”
But the word stave also refers to the five lines that music is written on. It’s no coincidence, therefore, that Dicken’s tale is similarly composed of five chapters. It’s his way of playing with the novella form to remind us that this is a Christmas story that, like the carols song at Christmas, contains a message of new life and possibilities.
Here, then, is “A Christmas Carol,” written by Charles Dickens…recited by Tales of the Magic Skagit host and producer, Michael Boss, 180 years after its publication in Victorian England.
Merry Christmas…and in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us everyone!”
