“Mr. Dickens & His Carol”
“The Christmas Carol” is such a legendary work that it’s hard to do it justice in one night. So, we decided not to. Ben turned it into another recurring theme that will make an appearance each year going forward by celebrating some portion of the iconic story. That could be by celebrating the author, a specific character, or a literary or film adaptation of it.
This year, we kicked off the theme with a little bit of background on where the book all began with Samantha Silva’s 2017 book “Mr. Dickens and His Carol: A Novel”. Yes, it is fancified and an offshoot tale that is not historically authentic, but it served as a good and easy starting point to see how one of the most beloved books of all time came to be.
To go along with the cozy reading of the book, we made the iconic English dessert Spotted Dick (a strangely named but delicious steamed pudding with a creamy vanilla custard sauce). The dessert dates back to England in the 1840s (just like “A Christmas Carol”) and the spots reference the currants or raisins and the “dick” was a common dialectal term used for pudding with the same etymology base as “dough”. Plus, the name was too perfect of a fit to go with our Dick...ens theme. It was the perfect dessert for a winter night ad made even better that we could share it with our Lifegroup from church.
After our Lifegroup left, we settled down to get started reading “Mr. Dickens and His Carol” and finish off another slice of Spotted Dick. We even added some vintage Victorian carols as background ambiance for our reading. There were certainly no “Bah Humbugs” from us with this one!
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