Ah, thank you so much Rebecca! We had to cut loads out of this one - glad the stuff that survived still makes sense. And it’s very gratifying to have such lovely feedback.
Such a great post! I'm going to hunt down some of these films, and the book is already at the top of my reading list after a prompt from another Substacker just last week!
I just also need to say that this last paragraph of the main piece is written so very beautifully that it's given me goosepimples:
"But, as shown in the beautifully lightweight The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) - a film about the writing of A Christmas Carol - the power of Dickens’ narrative was such that he not only gave the world one of its great fictional characters, and one its few indelible Christmas stories: he accidentally made one of the templates we have used for seasonal iconography ever since. Nearly 200 years after he sat down to dash off a little book in an attempt to pay some of his debts, Charles Dickens is still writing our Christmas."
As evidenced by my kids yelling "Light the lamp, not the rat!" throughout the house this time of year, The Muppet Christmas Carol is not just one of my favorite Christmas movies—it's one of my favorite films, period. It's just not Christmas yet until we've watched it.
I had no idea about the Blackadder rendition, and can't wait to check it out. Thanks for writing this!
Ah, thank you so much Rebecca! We had to cut loads out of this one - glad the stuff that survived still makes sense. And it’s very gratifying to have such lovely feedback.
Such a great post! I'm going to hunt down some of these films, and the book is already at the top of my reading list after a prompt from another Substacker just last week!
I just also need to say that this last paragraph of the main piece is written so very beautifully that it's given me goosepimples:
"But, as shown in the beautifully lightweight The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) - a film about the writing of A Christmas Carol - the power of Dickens’ narrative was such that he not only gave the world one of its great fictional characters, and one its few indelible Christmas stories: he accidentally made one of the templates we have used for seasonal iconography ever since. Nearly 200 years after he sat down to dash off a little book in an attempt to pay some of his debts, Charles Dickens is still writing our Christmas."
As evidenced by my kids yelling "Light the lamp, not the rat!" throughout the house this time of year, The Muppet Christmas Carol is not just one of my favorite Christmas movies—it's one of my favorite films, period. It's just not Christmas yet until we've watched it.
I had no idea about the Blackadder rendition, and can't wait to check it out. Thanks for writing this!