Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!

I hope your holiday has been wonderful. We are blessed to spend time with both of our extended families this Christmas season. It is sure busy, but we are blessed to be near so many family members this year.

I have decided to start a little tradition here on greenish bookshelf beginning this Christmas. Each Christmas, I plan to highlight a favorite Christmas book from that year. I hope to be blogging for years to come and am excited about this idea!

This year, I am focusing on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

This is my husband’s favorite Christmas book, and he likes the 1984 film best as well.

Following the redemptive story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, a wealthy and heard-hearted businessman in London, A Christmas Carol has become a classic loved by all. We started a tradition last year of reading it out loud together during December. I am pretty good at the accents and voices so we have a lot of fun with it.

We love this story of redemption and second chances. We laugh at Ebeneezer’s antics with each ghost. We grow and learn alongside him as he makes his journey–his disbelief and joy at viewing his youth again, his sadness at viewing the present of others, and his realization of what his future holds.

What always surprises us is the way each ghost makes Ebeneezer think about his life and the way he treats people. From the start of his experiences with the ghost of Christmas past, Ebeneezer is thinking about others–the young caroler outside his shop, his kindhearted clerk, and others. As we get older, we also realize that each ghost’s appearance is symbolic of their role and their time. And we can see how Ebeneezer is shaped by each of these times as he rethinks his life and his relationships.

We love Dickens as narrator. His characteristic wit and sophistication fly off the page. We laugh as he describes ridiculous scenes of merry making and Ebeneezer’s reactions to each of his visitors. Also characteristic of Dickens are his comments about the poor and destitute, about the importance of helping those less fortunate in a world of people that need help.

Perhaps our favorite moment of all is when Ebeneezer wakes up on Christmas morning after all three visitations, and realizes they have done it all in one night. His joy and excitement are contagious.

We hope you can experience this classic story this Christmas!

What are your favorite Christmas stories?