Faith Moore (0:01)

Hello and welcome to the Storytime for Grown Ups Christmas Spectacular. I'm Faith Moore and for the month of December, we'll be reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Each episode I'll read one chapter from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea or a mug of hot chocolate, find a cozy chair, throw another log on the fire and settle in. It's story time. Foreign hello. Happy December. It's finally here. We finally made it. It's December. I hope all of you here in the States had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And for those of you that are not in the States, I hope you had a wonderful Thursday, November 28th. I am so excited to be here with you, I cannot even tell you. This is the story time for Grown Ups Christmas Spectacular. It's going to be going on all December long and we are just getting started right right this second. So if you are new to this podcast, if you're just finding us for this book, for this Christmas spectacular, welcome. This is a wonderful place to start. We just finished reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and if you're interested in that, by the way, those episodes are still there, just scroll down in your podcast feed and you'll see them. And last January through May we read Jane Eyre and those episodes are all still there. Just scroll even further down in your podcast feed. But now for the month of December, we are reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which is a book that I absolutely love and I cannot wait to share it with you. It's one of those stories I think, that most people probably know, but far fewer of us have actually read, right? Maybe we've seen a movie or we just know that Ebenezer Scrooge is a miser or whatever. But the book itself is such a beautiful little gem of a story and it's only five chapters long or five staves long. And I'm going to explain what that means in a little bit. So it's only going to take us five episodes to read it. But we're not going to start reading today. We're going to begin the actual book on Thursday. And today we're going to just kind of set the scene. We do this with each book so that you can have a little bit of historical context and a little information about the author and things like that as you're heading into the story, but not too much. I think that you can overdo it and Kind of bump bog yourself down with that sort of thing. So we won't do that, but we will introduce the book and the world of the book today. And then on Thursday, we'll begin with the first chapter, and then we'll do one chapter per episode until we're done. So episodes come out every Monday and Thursday, and that means that we're going to finish the book on Thursday, December 19th, and then we'll finish off on December 23rd with a concluding episode where we wrap up everything we've been discussing. And somewhere along the line, a trailer for the January book, which will drop into your feed, so make sure that you're subscribed. Okay, so before I jump into the kind of meat of this episode and start really talking about A Christmas Carol, I'd like to just take care of a couple of housekeeping things. The first is just to say again how grateful I am that you're here. You know, I absolutely love this book, A Christmas Carol. I even wrote a book based on it, which I'll get to in a second. But ever since I was a little girl, my family has sat down every Christmas time to watch the 1951 Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, which I think is actually called Scrooge. And it's one of those movies that's just kind of a part of my DNA. Like, I quote lines from it all the time, and I think about it at various moments. And when I'm with my parents and my brother, we're always quoting it at each other when various things happen. And now my husband and even my kids know that when I'm saying certain weird things, it's because I'm quoting that movie. And those of you who've been listening to this show for a while know that I often come to the classics through something else, right? Like a movie or a stage play or some other sort of adaptation. And that's because I struggle with reading, and I always have. So it's easier for me to fall in love with a story via a different medium, like a film, and then pick up the book from there. And that's how I came to the actual book of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I. I read it because I love the movie so much and because the story is kind of ingrained in my consciousness, and I needed to find out what the source material actually was. So this story is really important to me, and it really means the world to me that I get to share it now with you in this way. So how this works for those of you who are new here. And just as a refresher for those of you who aren't new, how it works is that each episode begins with a question or a comment from you that allows us to dive into some element of the story that we've read so far. Doing that allows us to kind of develop some themes and unpack anything that was confusing and think more about the characters and really kind of walk around in the world of the book and hang out with these characters that live there. Because that's how a good book should be read, in my opinion. So your questions and your comments are the springboard for doing that. This show is absolutely nothing without them. So you, yes, you should get in touch. Right? I love hearing from you. You're never bothering me. And I even write back and I pick one or two of your letter each episode to read on the show. So you can write to me by going to my website, which is faith k.moore.com and then clicking on Contact. Like, there's a little tab at the top that says Contact. You click on that and then there's a form there that you fill out and it goes right to my email. There's also a link to that contact page in the show Notes, meaning the description of this episode in your podcast player wherever you're listening. So you can just click on that instead. If you don't want to go to my website via some other means. So that's one thing. Please do get in touch with your comments and thoughts. This is an interactive podcast. Okay? So send in those questions. The other thing I want to just briefly touch on before we really dive into our intro to A Christmas Carol is my novel, which is called Christmas Carol. That's Carol with a K. I said this on the last episode of Pride and Prejudice, but I'm going to say it again for those of you who are just joining us and for those who maybe skipped that episode, this is what I want to say about Even though I did write a book based on A Christmas Carol, I am not going to devote December to trying to sell you my book. Right. I chose Dickens as A Christmas Carol because it is an amazing book and I want to share it with you, not because I wanted to secretly sell you my Christmas book. Seriously, that is not my goal here. But I do know that some of you are really actually interested in my book or have read it or might want to read it. And I do hope that you'll pick up a copy or three this Christmas time. Because even though I'm not going to be Doing a month long, like, ad for the book. It is a book I wrote and it's important to me and I'd love it if you would check it out. It's a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol in which the Scrooge character has been reimagined as a workaholic mom named Carol. That's Carol with a K, whose miserliness is not about her money the way that Scrooge's is, but about her time. It's a really different kind of a story to the original story, but it uses the same narrative arc. And you will recognize certain scenes and characters from Dickens book. So here's what I'm going to do, okay? So that it doesn't take up too much of our time, and so that we can really keep this podcast about Dickens and not me. Because Dickens is a way better writer than me and he deserves much more airtime. Okay? So here's what I've done. I've recorded several videos which I am posting to my YouTube channel, of me reading sections from my book Christmas Carol, which correspond to the sections of Dickens's A Christmas Carol that we're going to be reading here. So those videos will drop at the same time as the storytime episodes, and I will link to them in the description of each episode. In fact, there is one there now. Surprise. So you can click on that and listen to me read from my book if you want. And if you don't want, then don't. Seriously, it's completely up to you. Okay? But those are there. I've said this before, and I'm gonna just say it again. All I've ever wanted to do, aside from getting married and having kids, is read stories and write stories, literally. And this podcast allows me to read great stories in community with you all. And that is a dream come true. And last Christmas, I got to publish a story that I wrote and share it with the world. And that was a dream come true as well. And I mean, I would be lying if I said that I didn't want you to read my book. I do. I really, really do. That's why I wrote it, to share it. But I also don't want to bother you about it too much or let it take over this show. So the last thing I'm going to say about it today is if you choose to buy a copy or multiple copies, because it would make a great gift, then there are a couple things that I would like to give to you. One is that everyone who buys a copy can have A signed book plate to put in that book. That's like a sticker that I sign and then I mail it to you. And then you stick it in the front of the book and it turns it into a signed copy. I would personalize it to you or to the person that you're gifting the book to or whoever you want. So anyone who buys the book can get one of those. And the other thing is that if you buy the book, you can be entered into a drawing to receive either your money back, meaning that you keep the book but the book is now free, or an additional signed copy you would choose and I would mail that to you with the signature actually in the book. So not a book pleat. So one person will win that. There's information at the end of the episode about how to do that, but essentially you just email me a screenshot of your receipt to show me that you bought the book. But listen at the very end for more info. And there's also a link in the show notes with more info as well. And, you know, thank you truly for allowing me to talk to you even this much about my book and for checking it out and maybe buying a copy or two. Okay, enough of that. Moving on. Let's talk about A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Since we haven't read any chapters yet, I don't have any questions or comments about the book to share with you yet, but I do want to read you a few reactions that people sent in when they found out that we were going to be reading A Christmas Carol, because I think that will give you kind of a flavor, if you're new here, of the types of letters that I generally get. And it will also show you the kind of wonderful way in which this show really has become a kind of community. And so here are a few of the reactions that I got. The first one is from Rachel Clevenger. I hope I said that right. She says. Just listened to the book reveal trailer for December on Storytime for Grown Ups and I am so excited. I was secretly hoping that it would be A Christmas Carol. Being only too familiar with the play and TV adaptations, I truly can't wait to listen to the novella. Thank you. This one's from Laura. She says, me and my hot cocoa are here for A Christmas Carol. I so called it from Sarah Beth. Not looking forward to leaving the world of Pride and Prejudice, but I am looking forward to spending the Christmas season with you and Scrooge. And this last one is from Cassie Toller. She writes, yes, a Christmas Carol. I knew it had to be that book when you mentioned doing a Christmas special, but that doesn't make me any less excited. I can't wait. The trailer was perfect and so Christmassy too. So, as I say, I just love hearing from you and I'm just so happy that you are as excited as I am to read this book. So let's dive into our intro to A Christmas Carol so that we're ready to go on Thursday. So I want to begin by talking for a bit about the concept of the Christmas ghost story. We don't really have this idea here in America so much. In fact, the idea that you might tell scary stories during the Christmas season sounds a little odd to us. I think, like, Christmas is a time of joy and family and presents and get togethers and things like that. Not scary stuff. Right. We feel like that's for Halloween. But in England, the Christmas ghost story is a staple of the Christmas season. And it became really, really popular during the Victorian era, which is when Charles Dickens was writing. So this tradition of telling ghost stories during the dark winter nights, it's been around for centuries, but in Victorian times, so the mid to late 1800s, basically the invention of the steam powered printing press made it so that you could circulate a lot of copies of your book, and so these stories could become much more widely available. And so then what had been a kind of oral tradition suddenly became immortalized in print. So this tradition that people would have been used to in their hometowns of snuggling around the fire and telling spooky stories became something that writers would capitalize on. And everyone began to expect these stories to come out in print at Christmas time or as Christmas approached. And even though this idea of spooky stories at Christmas might seem odd to us, I think it makes a kind of sense. If you think about it, Christmas is a time of nostalgia for a lot of people, right? It's a time of remembering Christmas's past and people we spent Christmas with who aren't with us anymore, and remembering ourselves as the children that we were and never will be again. Personally, I think it's because Christmas is so much about traditions. So it's a time when many of us do things that we've been doing since we were little kids, and it allows us to mark time in a way that we don't usually. So like, for example, suddenly our kids are the ones waking up and running down the hall to see if Santa came instead of us. But we did that exact same thing. And so we Feel that ache of longing for the past, that connection between the child version of us and the child that is now here in our home. Or we hang the star on the tree and remember that it used to be mom who did that, but she's gone or whatever, and time kind of telescopes, and we are mom, and mom is there with us for a moment and on and on, right? So telling stories about the veil between our world and the world beyond starts to make some sense, I think. Plus, of course, the fact that it is dark and cold, and in a time before electricity, maybe, we were all huddled around the fireplace drinking hot drinks. And so, of course, someone's gonna start telling a gh. It seems like it's almost inevitable. But these Christmas ghost stories aren't scary, right? They're not gory or horrific or disturbing or anything like that. They're spooky, right? Maybe they send a little chill up your spine, but also they're more about, like, loved ones lost or visitations from the world beyond to help us on our way. They're the cozy kind of ghost stories, right? Not the downright scary kind. So A Christmas Carol exists in this tradition of the Christmas ghost story. And I hope that over these few weeks in December, we can all huddle around our metaphorical fireplace with our steaming cups of tea or hot chocolate or whatever we've got and tell this story together. Because A Christmas Carol is a ghost story, right? It's about a man who's visited by three spirits as well as at least one actual ghost. And it should be seen that way as a kind of cozy, spooky, shivery story that you tell, snuggled up with your loved ones on a cold night by the fire. And it's also the Christmasiest of Christmas stories, too. And that's the beauty of it. It's not just a ghost story. It's also filled with the most wonderfully, achingly nostalgic descriptions of Christmas. And it just pulls at your heartstrings in a way that I cannot wait to share with you. And I really hope I can read these chapters convincingly without bursting into tears. So the book was published in 1843, so just for context, for listeners who've been with us a while, Jane Eyre was published in 1847, so pretty much around the same time. And Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813. So we are after Jane Austen, but pretty much contemporary with Charlotte Bronte. The full title of this book is A Christmas Carol in Prose. So A Christmas Carol, of course, is a song, right? Song at Christmas time. Which means that Dickens is telling us that this book is somehow a Christmas carol, a Christmas song, but that this Christmas carol is in prose, meaning it's written as a story. So it's not meant to be sung. It's not written in verse. In fact, it's not a song at all. But he wants us to understand that somehow it is a Christmas carol nonetheless, which I take to mean that in the same way that Christmas carols sort of succinctly sum up, like, the spirit of Christmas in terms of certain musical elements and these little gems of poetry that paint these Christmas pictures, his book will succinctly sum up the spirit of Christmas in much the same way. And this is why his chapters are not called chapters, but staves. Staves are what we here in America would call staffs. A staff or a stave is the place where you write out musical notation. It's those five lines and spaces, and each line and space represents a letter of the musical Alphabet. Right? So basically, each chapter of the book is meant to be seen as essentially one verse of this Christmas carol that is a book. One thing that's interesting to know for historical context, I think, is that the traditions and ideas around Christmas and Christmas time underwent a huge shift during the Victorian era, which is when Dickens was writing. Queen Victoria and her husband Albert and their children were seen at the time as the sort of epitome of the perfect family. There was a focus during this time on family and family life. And it was during the Victorian era that Christmas became a time to be with your extended family. The advent of the railroad made it possible for people to travel longer distances, so visiting your family was possible in a way it hadn't been before. And Christmas became a time when people would often try to do that. It was also during this time that Christmas began to have an emphasis on children. And Father Christmas, or what we would call Santa Claus, became much more front and center. And his role was kind of reimagined as the jolly bringer of gifts that we know today, today. And also this idea of magic and the presence being left overnight by this supernatural being, that's a product of this time period as well. Prince Albert, so Queen Victoria's husband, he came from a small German principality, and he is credited with introducing some German Christmas customs to Britain, most notably the Christmas tree. This was also the time when Christmas cards became a thing because postal reforms made it easier to send and receive letters. So because Christmas was becoming a time for family, people began sending cards to their friends and family at Christmas time if they couldn't be together in person. So the kind of Christmas ethos that is familiar to most of us, I think, of Christmas trees and carols and cards and being with family and reminiscing about days gone by and all of that, is really a Victorian Christmas. It has survived since then into the modern day, but it's really the Victorian idea of Christmas. But also Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol specifically play a huge part in why all of these traditions are still with us. This book, A Christmas Carol, was so popular that it kind of cemented all these Victorian traditions, which were new and vibrant at the time that Dickens was writing into the popular consciousness. It's also Dickens who is usually credited with the idea that Christmas time is snowy. Right. The idea of the white Christmas. England is not a particularly snowy place, and it's actually very rare for it to snow on Christmas in England. Even other places where it does snow, much more like parts of the US for example, it frequently doesn't snow around Christmas time because Christmas is still fairly early in the winter. But, of course, snow is a huge part of the idea of Christmas. And you'll see in A Christmas Carol that snow and frost and bitter cold and all these things that sound very Christmassy to us are a huge part of the kind of, like, vibe of the story. So why would Dickens be writing about snow at Christmas time when it doesn't snow in England around Christmastime? And the answer is that he grew up during the coldest decade England had seen since the 1690s. So in his childhood, Christmas actually was a very cold, often icy, sometimes snowy experience. And even though he was obviously an adult when he wrote his Christmas stories, that connection between ice and snow and Christmas time clearly stuck with him. And because it stuck with him and because his book was so hugely popular, it has also stuck with us. So this book, A Christmas Carol, was describing both the traditions of the day during a time when Christmas and Christmas traditions were having a kind of revival and a rebirth. But also it describes the Christmases of Dickens childhood, which were already a thing of the past when he was writing. Hence that sense of nostalgia that's kind of baked into the story and therefore into Christmas as well. My point here is that so much of what Christmas now is to so many people all over the world was solidified, popularized, and in some cases, invented by Charles Dickens, largely via A Christmas carol. So Dickens himself was born in 1812, and he had a pretty rough childhood. His father was sent to a debtor's prison when Dickens was 12 and Dickens had to leave school and go to work at a boot blacking factory in order to make money. Three years later, his father inherited some money, which allowed him to come out of the prison and which allowed Dickens to return to school. After school, he worked for a while as a law clerk, and then later he went into journalism, and his first short story was published in 1833. And his first novel, which was called the Pickwick Papers, was published serially beginning in 1836. Probably because of his experiences in childhood, Dickens was a huge supporter of social reform, particularly for children. The Victorian era was a time of vast kind of industrial change, and the cities were filled with the poor all living together, really packed together in these squalid slums. And children were often sent out to work at very early ages or just abandoned by their parents because they couldn't feed them. And sometimes the children would turn to crime as a way to survive. Dickens was avidly against the kinds of child labor that was going on at the time and the various laws that were in place that allowed for this kind of thing to continue to happen. And you can often find his views about all this extremely expressed by various characters in his books. And this idea of the need for social reform and for improved care for children are huge themes in his work, and you'll see them come up in A Christmas Carol as well. Dickens died in 1870, and his books have never been out of print. So he was hugely popular during his life and he is still a household name to this day. Right. Not to mention the fact that words like Dickensian are now part of our lexicon. The picture that he paints in his books of Victorian life, particularly of the poor and the middle class, they're just unmatched. Right. If, after this, you are looking for other books by Dickens to go away and read on your own, I would recommend taking a look at either David Copperfield or Bleak House. These, I think, are his two best, but we won't be able to read them here on Storytime because they're far too long. So eventually, I do hope to do more Dickens, but I won't be able to share those two with you, even though I consider them to be his best books. But as I have said many times in other places, I hope that this podcast will not only be a place where you can come to listen to great stories with some notes along the way, but that it would also help you to go away and read other stories on your own, because you're going to pick up some language and context and things like that that you can take with you. So reading this book by Dickens that we're going to read together will, I hope, allow you to go away and read more Dickens on your own. And if you do, please write to me and tell me what you think. He's a masterful writer and well worth the time it takes to read some of his longer works. So I hope that gives you a little bit of an overview of this book and its historical context. I don't want to go on and on about it because like I said, I really think too much information can make a novel into like a textbook or something where you're searching for the various historical ideas and the author's biography and things like that on every page. And that's not how we're supposed to read. An authority, as far as I'm concerned. We're supposed to immerse ourselves in the story, travel to the world of the book and walk around in there for a while, meeting these various characters and letting them speak to us. So that's what we're gonna do. Okay, starting on Thursday, we will begin Stave one of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. And I hope that you'll be there with us. So don't forget to check out the links in the show notes for the various promotions I was talking about at the beginning of this episode. And please, even though we haven't started reading, please do write to me. Faithk moore.com Click on Contact and tell me what you think about the various details I gave in this episode. Or feel free to ask clarifying questions if something I said wasn't clear. Or just comment if you found something interesting or even confusing. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for being with us for Storytime for Grown Ups. Thank you for being here for this Christmas spectacular. I cannot wait to start this book with you on Thursday. See you then. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to check out my novel Christmas Carol. That's Carol with a K. Using the link in the Show Notes to hear me read an excerpt from the book tied to today's episode, click on the link in the Show Notes. I would be so grateful if you would consider buying a copy or a few copies for yourself or as a gift. If you buy a copy of the book and email me a screenshot of your receipt, you'll be entered into a drawing to receive your choice of either your money back or an additional signed copy. The email to send the receipt to is in the Show Notes. If you buy multiple copies you can enter the drawing multiple times. The winner will be notified by email. Also, everyone who buys a copy of the book is entitled to a free signed bookplate which you can stick into the book to make it a signed copy if you'd like one. Just email the screenshot of your receipt to the email address listed in the Show Notes and let me know whom you'd like the book plate made out to and what address to mail it to. Thank you so much for supporting me and the work I do by buying my book this Christmas time. And of course don't forget to get in touch with comments or questions about this episode. Please go to my website faithkmoore.com click on contact and send me your questions and thoughts or you can click on the link in the Show Notes to contact me. I'll feature one or two of your entries at the start of the next episode. Alright everyone, storytime is over. To be continued.