What Christmas is as we grow older by Charles Dickens, read by Michael Fenton-Stevens.

Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring,

left nothing out for us to miss or seek, bound together all our home enjoyments, affections and hopes,

grouped everything and everyone around the Christmas fire,

and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes complete.

Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts overleaped that narrow boundary.

When there was someone very dear, we thought then, very beautiful and absolutely perfect,

wanting to the fullness of our happiness.

When we were wanting to, or we thought so, which did just as well,

at the Christmas half by which that someone sat, and when we intertwined with every reef and garland of our life, that same one's name.

That was the time of the very bright visionary Christmases, which have long arisen from us to show faintly after summer

rain in the palest edges of the rainbow. That was the time when the beautified enjoyment of the things

that were to be, and never were, and yet the things that were so real in our resolute hope,

that it would be hard to say now what realities achieved since have

been stronger. What, did that Christmas never really come when we and the priceless Pearl,

who is our young choice, were received after the happiest of totally impossible marriages,

by the two united families previously had daggers drawn on our account,

when brothers and sisters-in-law, who had always been rather cool to us before our relationship

was effected, perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited

incomes. Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, after which we arose and generously

and eloquently rendered honour to our late rival present in the company, then and there exchanging

friendship and forgiveness, and founding an attachment not to be surpassed in Greek or Roman story,

...