KZSM Presents 'A Christmas Carol'
This Tuesday, December 19, from 4-5 p.m., KZSM FM 104.1 and KZSM.org will broadcast a live adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic on “Bookmarked,” our regular book show. Every year since I began hosting the show in 2018, I’ve invited KZSM program hosts, “Bookmarked” regular guests, and friends to read holiday stories and poems for a seasonal special. This year, I tentatively proposed a “Christmas Carol” reading, expecting resistance. Instead, people eagerly quoted favorite lines and claimed favorite roles: “Can I be the Ghost of Christmas Past?” Volunteer sound engineers found ways to mic a cast of ten and create special effects, and the project came together.
What is it about that 180-year-old story that still resonates, even in this busy information age? “A Christmas Carol” has never been out of print and has been filmed some sixteen times. At the beginning, it helped revive interest in the celebration of Christmas, but the festivities it depicts are now taken for granted and their source forgotten.
However, the message lives. Most recently, in a Facebook meme featuring an illustration from the story with the sarcastic caption: “’A Christmas Carol’ is the heartwarming tale of how rich people must be supernaturally terrorized into sharing.” Every year, the story reminds us to share, to think of others “as if they really were fellow-travelers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys,” as one character puts it.
I believe the story and its message endure because of the way it is conveyed. Scrooge must stand at the intersection of past, present, and future, both in and out of time. He also stands both inside and outside of his own life, brought by the ghosts to a place where he can accept and change himself.
The rest of us aren’t visited by ghosts at Christmas, but the rituals of the season evoke powerful memories that merge past and present, like that moment when you smell a Christmas tree and feel yourself a child again, perhaps able to grow as Scrooge does.
Dickens’ story sends me to that place. Its enduring power has transformed some of our KZSM family and friends into a cast of radio players to create a ritual of our own. Tune to 104.1 FM or KZSM.org and share it with us.
