Each of the five staves of Dickens' work were read by a different person, four of them members of St. John's, and the final reader, Jowi Taylor, better known as host and co-producer of CBC Radio's Global Village. The idea for this production was conceived by Judy Maddron of CBC Radio, which includes choral music before the first stave and then following each reading. All of the proceeds from this performance, and the previous evening's, were donated to the Halton Region's Habitat for Humanity.

Similar productions will have been or will be performed in more than 100 churches across Canada, all in conjunction with CBC Radio. The Rev. Vickie Edgeworth-Pitcher, in her introduction to the performance at St. John's pointed out that A Christmas Carol was published only eight years after the St. John's community first met to celebrate its first Christmas together in 1835. The church opened its doors for its first Christmas celebration in 1839. As she stated, the church's atmosphere would have been not very unlike that of the evening of the performance of A Christmas Carollast Saturday night. Ensuring the audience felt the connection with the past, the readers and the choir members of Ars Antiqua, under the direction of David Davis, all dressed in period costume.

Although the readers, with the exception of Taylor, are not professional performers or orators, they gave a remarkably emotive presentation. Taylor, of course, managed to inject a further sense of reality by falling easily into the correct London accents for the characters.

The Rev. Vickie, as some of her parishioners called her affectionately that evening, first heard this production of A Christmas Carol on CBC Radio nine years ago. She liked it so much, she contacted the CBC. The result is that St. John's has offered the reading every since each Christmas season.

In the introduction to his story A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote: "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

"Their faithful Friend and Servant,

"C.D. December, 1843."

Well, he succeeded with his endeavour. For most adults, and one hopes, for most children old enough to understand the story, the opening paragraph of A Christmas Carol must surely be as familiar as most Christmas carols they sing so regularly. It may not seem a very uplifting opening for a Christmas tale, but it is very effective.

"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 door-nail."

While many youngsters are more familiar with the Gringe's sudden conversion to kindness than that of Scrooge, his name won't be unfamiliar to them. Nor will the word "humbug", which Scrooge uttered when invited to come to his nephew's home for Christmas dinner. Of course, for many kiddies, humbugs will be the striped peppermints that appear at Christmas time, not the derisive word meaning rubbish or silly. I noticed though that once they understand the word's true meaning, they seem to delight in using it.

For those in attendance on Saturday, who accepted an invitation for carol singing at the church hall after the performance without uttering, "humbug", the spirit of the closing lines of A Christmas Carol seemed to have followed them.

"Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

"He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"

In the hall they enjoyed mulled cider, nibbled on cheese and ate some sweets, then circled around the piano and sang Christmas carols with much gusto.

A Christmas Carol there this pre-Christmas season of 2004 has added much to our household's enjoyment of Christmas. If you are anywhere near Burlington next December, make it a point of attending one of these readings, for you will be in for some very enjoyable moments.