The Infinite Versions of A Christmas Carol

“Bumhug!”

Hey guess what? It’s that time of year again! The time of year when snow is supposed to fall but doesn’t. The time of year when I decapitate pine trees and put them in my living room dressed up like a 1920’s flapper. The time of year when I gorge myself on sugary pastries and baked animal flesh. I refer to, of course, Hogswatchnight.

There are countless holidays, feasts, and cultural celebration in the winter months, from Hanukkah and Diwali to New Year’s Eve and Festivus. But it just so happens that the holiday I observe is Christmas, so that’s the one I’ll be talking about this week, kind of like how I did that same thing last year. Unfortunately, this year I don’t have nearly as much time as I did last year, which is apparently becoming a running theme in my life, so this might end up being a shorter Christmas post. But it’s still going to be talking about things that are terrible. Sort of.

There are about five million different versions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. There’s movies. There’s stage plays. There’s probably a video game somewhere, maybe a board game adaptation, too. There’s so many of them that I would be deeply surprised if anyone living in America hadn’t seen at least two separate versions. But of course, they’re pretty variable in quality.

To be fair, all Christmas movies tend to be pretty variable in quality. I, personally, really like The Year Without a Santa Claus, just because of the Heat Miser/Snow Miser song. For other people, that movie makes them uncomfortable. As do a lot of the weird, vaguely creepy stop-motion Christmas movies. And I don’t blame them, honestly. Even though I like the movies, something about Rudolph’s dead eyes gives me the heebie jeebies.

Elf is a pretty good watch, overall. A Christmas Story holds up over time. Die Hard is still a Christmas movie, and the Peanuts Christmas special is still one of the best American television traditions to exist, ever. But for ever Little Drummer Boy or Frosty the Snowman, there’s a stinker, like Jingle All the Way or Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. And for every Christmas movie, good or bad, there’s probably two versions of A Christmas Carol.

Now, the original Christmas Carol , published in 1843, was pretty popular when it came out. The first edition sold out before Christmas, and thirteen more editions were published within the next year. People called it a way to reinvigorate Christmas, a way to give London a new look at the holiday. Charles Dickens did live readings of the story until his death, and it’s maybe his most famous work, besides maybe Tale of Two Cities, but even that doesn’t come close to the ridiculous superstardom of A Christmas Carol.

It might be weird today to think of ghosts being associated with Christmas, since A Christmas Carol is just about the only Christmas story with ghosts in it, but interestingly enough, ghost stories used to be incredibly popular around Christmas. Authors of the day, especially in London, would write scary stories to be read aloud at Christmas gatherings. This fell by the wayside sometime in the past, though I personally think that we should bring that back and tell tales of the Krampus at Christmas again. But even though scary stories aren’t much a part of the Christmas tradition, A Christmas Carol had survived. Probably because everyone wants to have their own version of it.

Back in high school, I played Jacob Marley in my school’s production of Humbug, a soulless take on A Christmas Carol that felt like it was produced in a factory where they just threw every plot point, unchanged, into Microsoft Word and gave it a new skin. Ironically, the new skin is about corporate greed and takes place in the modern day, even though the play reads like it was written by CEOs to make a quick buck. But whatever. Maybe I view it so poorly because my high school refused to do the play that I wrote specifically to be performed at my high school. But this is neither here nor there and is most certainly not in the Christmas spirit.

But like I said earlier, there’s a seemingly infinite number of different versions of A Christmas Carol. I’ve only seen a few of them, but just looking up some of the others that I haven’t seen seems to open a gateway to insanity. For example, Bill Murray had Scrooged, which was pretty good. It’s got 1980’s Bill Murray, how could you possibly fail? And the Muppets have a version of it, with Michael Caine as Scrooge and Gonzo as Charles Dickens. To be fair, it wasn’t as good as the 1979 Muppet movie, but that could be because Jim Henson, Master of Puppets, had just died a couple years before. But did you know that there’s a Flintstones Christmas Carol? Or a Tim Curry version? My one question is: why?

There’s Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, The Smurfs, the dogs from All Dogs Go to Heaven except the Ones that go to Dog Hell, Jim Carrey, Patrick Stewart, Nicolas Cage, that new FX Christmas Carol that’s apparently pretty solid, and plenty more, I’m sure. Hell, there’s even an unofficial Mario Christmas Carol. The list goes on, but why? Why does everyone feel the need to get in on this, this thing that’s been done a thousand times before? Is it because it’s guaranteed to make money? Is it because it’s got good, solid morals and a classic tale of redemption? Is it because of the meme, at this point? I don’t know. I wish I knew, because maybe then there wouldn’t be so damn many of the same thing over and over again. Especially when, like the play I did in high school, there’s absolutely nothing special to make this particular version stand out.

Personally, my favorite version of A Christmas Carol has been and always will be the Mr. Magoo version. I don’t know anything else about Mr. Magoo besides that he’s in this edition of A Christmas Carol. I’ve never seen a single other thing with that character in it, and I probably never will because who the hell is Mr. Magoo? It doesn’t matter because all you need to know about the guy is that he’s near-blind and old.

I think one of the reasons I like this version so much is purely for the nostalgic value of it. My brother and I would watch it at our grandmother’s house on Thursdays when she would babysit us. We watched it during the winter, sure, but we also watched it during the middle of summer because we just liked it that much. I still know quite a few of the songs from the movie, and my brother and I still have inside jokes about those same songs. But it isn’t just me, apparently plenty of other people really like that version, too. Hey, at least the animation doesn’t fall into the Uncanny Valley.

One of these days, I hope that we get an adaptation of other Christmas stories, or movies about entirely new Christmas stories. They can even be new ghost stories, or adaptations of other old-timey Christmas ghost stories. But whatever it is, I just hope it’s something new. Because we have a lot of all of the same, and every year we get more of the same. More versions of A Christmas Carol. More versions of living snowmen. More versions of Tim Allen. I want something new, damn it! Is that so much to ask for?

At least give me some sort of new spin on A Christmas Carol. Tell the story from the perspective of the ghosts or something. Or give us a whole look at Scrooge’s life, not just specific flashbacks. Maybe even set it in the modern day in a way that isn’t just plopping Victorian England with a new coat of paint. Or, hey, there’s “The Gift of the Magi,” by O. Henry. That could be a pretty cool movie! You could even make it a rom-com or something like that. Set it in the 20’s, give it to the guy who directed the new Great Gatsby, and boom you’ve got colorful Christmas nonsense. What more could you need?

Ah, whatever. It doesn’t really matter much. I’m content with my unlimited iterations of A Christmas Carol. Maybe one day I’ll be famous enough that my characters will get a version of it. But even if they do, however good it is, it’ll never be as good as the greatest Christmas movie of all time: Santa with Muscles. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!