It’s that time of year again. Time once more for my annual public countdown watching A Christmas Carol (ACC)!

Much of this year’s blog design may look the same for the last five years. There are some unexpected differences this year!

WordPress has changed some of the available widgets that have become standard in The Scrooge Countdown’s sidebars. My usual countdowns to Christmas Day and Epiphany are no longer accessible. Some other widgets are also missing. The sidebar is looking a little bare this year because of this.

So, what’s happening here?

I love A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I enjoy sharing my enthusiasm for it. I’m passionate talking about it.

I have loved A Christmas Carol ever since I was a child. I know this idea is a common statement and there is a myriad of people who say the same. As a post-World War II American, it’s common that I first experienced A Christmas Carol in an entertainment form well before ever reading Dickens’ great novella. I had yet to learn beyond grade school primers first time I saw A Christmas Carol. But at the age of six, when I saw my first version, ACC had me hooked. It became and has remained my favorite Christmas story and it never gets old.

As I grew up and eventually read the novella, my love for the story was stronger. (Dickens became and remains one of my favorite novelists, even though Evelyn Waugh is my favorite English writer of all time). With it, my passion for adaptations has only increased. Whenever any version was broadcast on television, that was how I spent my time. For me, this was one of the highlights during the Christmas season.

It was the VHS / VCR era, after I was finally able to get my first VCR, when I started my personal collection of various versions of A Christmas Carol. This meant home recorded tapes from televised showings. At that time, the average retail price of retail VHS movies was $30-50 (or more!); this was a very high price at the time, so it was obvious that I recorded it when they aired. It was at that time I realized how many dramatizations there were.

As the cost of VHS movies steadily dropped, it was wonderful replacing my home-recorded versions with better quality retail ones. Even better, versions that I had never seen before, or those that were rarely shown, started to become available! It became an obsession to watch every version I could obtain during the season. As my collection grew, it became hard to watch as many as I could when my free time would allow. There have been a few aggressive marathon watchings, viewing of one right after the other, on both Christmas Eve and Day. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I never had a watching plan until the annual blog.

Plan

As I state every year, I don’t anticipate viewing them all, but there will be a lot (and it will be personally satisfying). Although I also have and view many of the non-traditional adaptations, spin-offs, continuations, etc., I personally prefer those that are traditional and set in early Victorian London. I very much like some of the non-traditional takes and they are included. I have also loved the many other presentations: the radio shows (I have a few), ballet, opera, stage shows (both non-musical and musical), and even comics!

Many years ago, thanks to our friend the Internet, I learned that there are other obsessives who have collected and watched a growing list of adaptations. In the earlier days of the web, I had a very small, personal experimental site dedicated solely to available VHS versions.

After my original, long-lived simple site, I began the annual Christmas Carol/Scrooge response/review blogs in 2013. The “editions” up to now have been non-consecutive as there were two different years I didn’t post.

There are scholars that have devoted time and study to the A Christmas Carol phenomenon in its non-print forms. My yearly blog is solely for fun and to share with others.

I am not a critic and have no wish to try to appear as one. As usual, there will be brief entries about each version I watch with my personal perceptions or opinions. I have no predetermined order I will be viewing most versions, although I do have personal traditions of watching particular versions on Christmas Eve and Christmas night.