Audio CD Review
by Mary Ellen Hannibal

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
Narrated by the Very Reverend Alan Jones,
Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

Year after year, the grumpy old man and the sickly little boy emblematic of Dickens' famous Christmas story are trotted out in various guises. There are school plays, television and other professional performances, and even a cartoon version of Ebeneezer Scrooge. The story had become quite stale for me until I listened to a wonderful new recording of "A Christmas Carol" by the Very Reverend Alan Jones, Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral.

"Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it." That is, until the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, shows up on his door knocker and proceeds to thoroughly disturb his night's peace. Scrooge is the quintessence of narrow self-interest, maniacally focused on the material world. Having closed off his capacities for grief and compassion, he is utterly estranged from the life of the spirit. Scrooge's journey through the night, through the past, where he is confronted by his demons and faced point blank with his mortality form the classic trajectory of the hero's journey. What makes Scrooge's eventual enlightenment so satisfying, of course, is that he demonstrates it through renewed connection with his nephew Bob Cratchit and family.

Those of us lucky enough to live in San Francisco and actually hear Alan Jones each week at Grace Cathedral (or on line at GraceCathedral.org) are perhaps as hooked on his delivery as on his message. Jones has a wonderful lilt, and in his narration of the story the wit and insight that make Dickens a genius are fully realized. We may all remember "bah humbug" and "God bless us, every one" as the signatures of the story, but this unique audio presentation allows us to savor much other wonderful language. Scrooge's nephew, Fred, loves Christmas, he says it is a time in which men and women "seem 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." Grace Cathedral's Choir of Men and Boys punctuates the narrative with beautiful music.

-- Mary Ellen Hannibal is a freelance writer and author of Good Parenting Through Your Divorce. You can purchase A Christmas Carol at Amazon.com.