Music Welcome to the newscast, the podcast is on to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Marley's Ghost. Tonight we'll read the opening to a Christmas Carol, an oveled by Charles Dickens, originally published in 1843. The story recounts how Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser, is visited by the spirits of Christmas and is in the process transformed. Dickens wrote a Christmas Carol during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as Christmas Christmas cards and Christmas trees. It captured the zeitgeist of the mid-Victorian revival of the Christmas holiday. Dickens had acknowledged that influence of the modern Western observance of Christmas and later inspired several aspects of Christmas, including family gatherings, seasonal food, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit. Let's get cozy, close your eyes, Relax your body into the softness of your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths. Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge's name was good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of iron mongerie in the trade, but the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Morley was as dead as a door now. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for, I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, is soul administrator, is soul assign, his soul friend, and soul mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from.

There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood

where nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind upon his own ramparts, then there would be in any other middle-age gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot. Say St. Paul's churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door. Scrooge and Marley, the firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people knew to the business called Scrooge, Scrooge, and sometimes Marley. But he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner, hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze as old features.

Niped. and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze as old features.

Nipped his pointed nose, shriveled this cheek, stiffened his gate, made his eyes red,

his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rhyme was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wierry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him. He iced his office in the dog days, and didn't thought one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth, good warm, no wintery weather chill him. No wind that blue was bitter than he. No falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. No pelting rain less open to entreaty. Fowl weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say with glad some looks. My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle. No children asked him what it was o'clock. No man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts, and then would wag their tails as though they said, know why at all is better than an evil eye. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked, to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to scrooge.

Once upon a time of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve, old scrooge sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy, and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. had not been light all day, and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every keyhole and was so dense without that, that, although the court was of the narrowest, the house's opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything. One might have thought that nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large scale. The door of Scrooge's counting house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal, but he couldn't replenish it. For Scrooge kept the coal box in his own room, and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort not being a man of strong imagination, he failed. A Merry Christmas, Uncle. God save you.

Cry to cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. Ba said Scrooge. Humbug.

He had so heated himself with a rapid walking in the fog in front. Ba," said Scrooge. Humbug.

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost. This nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow. His face was ready and handsome. His eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. Chris is a humbug uncle.

Said Scrooge's nephew.

You don't mean that I'm sure.' "'I do,' said Scrooge. "'Mary, Christmas, what right have you to be married? What reason have you to be married? You're poor enough.' "'Come, then,' returned the, Gaeli. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough? Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment said, Ba, again, and followed it up with, Humbug. Don't be cross, Uncle, said the nephew. What else can I be? Returned the Uncle when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas. Out upon Merry Christmas, what's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer? A time for balancing your books and having every item in them, through round a dozen of months presented dead against you. If I could work my will, said Scrooge, indignantly, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart he should.

Uncle pleaded the nephew, nephew returned the uncle sternly, keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mind. Keep it repeated, scrooge his nephew, but you don't keep it. Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. Much good may it do to you. Much good has ever done you." There are many things from which I might have derived good by which I have not profited. I dare say. Return the nephew. Christmas among the rest, but I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time when it has come around, apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that, as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good. And I say, God bless it. The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded, becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety. He poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever. Let me hear another sound from you, said Scrooge, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir." He added, turning to his nephew, I wonder you don't go into Parliament. Don't be angry, Uncle. Come. Dine with us tomorrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him. Yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression and said that he would see him in that extremity first. But why, Crine Scrooge's nephew?

Why?

Why did you get married? Said Scrooge. Because I fell in love. Because you fell in love. Groud Scrooge. As if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. Good afternoon. Nay, Uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now? Good afternoon, said Scrooge. I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why cannot we be friends? Good afternoon, said Scrooge. I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel to which I have been a party, but I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last, so a Merry Christmas uncle. Good afternoon, Setscrooch, and a Happy New Year. Good afternoon, Setscrooch. His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned them cordially. There's another fellow, muttered Scrooge, who overheard him, my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week and a wife and a family talking about a merry Christmas, all retired at Bedlam. This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him. Scrooge and Marley, as I believe, said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley? Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. Scrooge replied, he died seven years ago ago this very night.

We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner, said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. the ominous word, liberality, scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back. At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge said the gentleman, taking up a pen, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor

and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. Are there no prisons?" Asked Scrooge. Plentylenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again, and the Union workhouses demanded Scrooge. Are they still in operation? They are still returned to the gentleman. I wish I could say they were not. The treadmill and the poor law are in full vigor, then," said Scrooge. Both very busy, sir. Ah, I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge.

I am very glad to hear it. Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude, returned the gentleman, a few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We chose this time, because it is a time

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