Hello everyone and welcome to a special Christmas episode of Speaking with Joy.

Today I'll be telling you about my yearly tradition of reading Charles Dickens' classic book, A Christmas Carol.

Wherever this episode finds you, whether it's drinking a cozy mug of hot chocolate or wrapping presents

or baking cookies, I hope it will bring Christmas cheer to your day and a bit of brightness

in the gloom of this year. Hello everyone and a very merry Christmas Eve Eve, as Eloise at the Plaza would say it.

I'm podcasting to you from a gray and rainy day in Oxford.

This year I'll be spending Christmas in England,

which surprisingly is the first time I've spent

Christmas holidays in the UK since I always go back

to visit my family in the US.

But this year, a good chunk of my family is, how shall we say,

stuck or blessedly here in the UK. And so rather than messing with quarantines and the wild

travel that would be required, we, at least some of us are hunkered down in Oxford. And Oxford is not quite its usual festive self,

but it is beautiful and there are lights up everywhere. And I have really been leaning into

everything that I can that is Christmassy this year. And amongst the many Christmas traditions,

which I enjoy, one of which being making

Christmas cookies, which saying that made me realize that I need to make some Christmas

cookies this afternoon, one of my yearly traditions has been to read the Christmas Carol by Charles

Dickens. I don't actually remember when I started this tradition. I think my family, we enjoyed

it together, but then somewhere along the way, maybe in college, I started doing it on my own, and then a couple of years ago I read it out loud with my mom.

And it's just been kind of a habit every year to read the Christmas Carol as I come up upon Christmas Day. And it's been really fun to do that this year in particular

because I'm spending Christmas in England.

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