The Evening Read-In: A Christmas Carol Part 1

It’s here – the first part of the very first TRO Evening Read-In! If you’re quite settled, and have enough tea or hot chocolate and biscuits to last you through just under an hour, then we’ll begin the story of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol… (click the link below to start listening)

A Christmas Carol – Part One audio

Go here if you’d like to read along with the text as you listen…

And if you’d rather just listen, a brief synopsis of the first part:

Ebenezer Scrooge is a cold man. It is not just his surroundings that replicate the iciest chill of the fiercest Arctic winter, but his very person too. He is miserly, miserable, self-contained and almost completely cut-off from family, friends and society – his only ‘friend’ and ‘kindred spirit’ in the world, Jacob Marley (of Scrooge & Marley) having died on Christmas Eve seven years earlier. Even before Marley’s death, Scrooge never particularly liked Christmas. He certainly doesn’t see it as an occasion to celebrate or reason to holiday from work.

As Christmas Day fast approaches, Scrooge is distinctly without Christmas cheer and has little time or consideration to give to anyone wanting to celebrate the season – not his very cheery nephew Fred, not passing carollers, certainly not the poor and destitute who could profit from his assistance at this special time of year. He is just about able to begrudgingly allow his overwrought clerk, Bob Cratchit, to have Christmas Day off to spend with his family – but not without wondering why anyone would rather celebrate when they could be productive and working, even if the occasion only falls once a year.

As Scrooge returns to his house that Christmas Eve – which is just as dark and dismal as his place of work, if not more so – he expects to face an entirely normal night with definitely no out-of-the-ordinary occurrences. But soon after he enters, some very strange things happen which puts Scrooge in rather a superstitious mood. In his home, Scrooge receives another visitor – and not one he can so easily dismiss – who has a stark warning for Scrooge about his life and his ways, with a promise of more unwelcome visitors to come…

It’s an interactive shared reading experience – so join in the conversation by tweeting: attach the hashtag #eveningreadin to your tweets (or tweet us @thereaderorg) so you can share your thoughts on Scrooge and the story over the next hour.