The short version of what we’re doing:
- We’ve published our first Jesuit Media Lab book, a read-aloud version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” formatted as a play.
- You can buy it for $5 as a paperback or a Kindle eBook here.
- And we’d like to invite you to get some friends or family members together to read it this coming Advent.
- Sign up via the link below to host a communal reading in your own home, parish, community center or on a video conferencing app, and we’ll send you detailed tips for a successful gathering, an invite to an optional kickoff webinar, and, after the New Year, a $25 promo code for any future JML offering.
Tell us you’ll plan to host a gathering by filling out this form! Jesuit Media Lab: Host “A Christmas Carol” Communal Reading
And here’s this project’s backstory:
In early Lent 2024, the playwright/journalist/theatre teacher/Catholic Worker Renée Roden pitched an idea to us at the Jesuit Media Lab: How about getting people together on Zoom during Holy Week to read a play aloud together? And how about reading “The Last Day of Judas Iscariot” by Stephen Adly Guirgis, which is a courtroom drama set in the afterlife with appearances from Jesus, Judas, Sigmund Freud and Mother Teresa, among others? It sounded like a great idea, so we scrambled to pull it together to run over three nights that upcoming Holy Week, which was just a month off.
The experience blew me away. It was such a powerful way to enter Holy Week — gathering with these strangers from all over the U.S. and Canada to read a play aloud, then reflecting on what we had heard. I’ll never think of the relationships between Jesus and Judas the same way again.
We decided to pick a new play for the following Advent, then did it again in Holy Week 2025. All three programs filled up quickly. So we’re offering something new now, inspired by our Zoom retreats, open to whoever wants to try it. We have published our very first JML book, a read-aloud version Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” adapted from Dickens’ own personal copy he abridged to use when reading the novella aloud. (You can find Dickens’ annotated copy, complete with fascinating marginalia and notes to himself for performances, at the New York Public Library digital collections website.)
Renée brought her keen playwright’s eye to the text and formatted it as a play so you can easily read it aloud with friends or family. Gather in person at a house or a church or hop on a video conferencing app and take a part each — and probably way more than one part each, since there are more than 40 voices in the piece! Read through the text aloud in one gathering or, if necessary, over a couple evenings.
Our edition includes a simple how-to guide and two essays by our Jesuit Media Lab fellows to accompany the text. The first essay, by literature scholar Michael O’Connell, is a look at the novella from an Ignatian perspective. The second essay, by Renée, is about theatre and reading aloud within the Catholic tradition.
Here are six tips for hosting a communal reading of “A Christmas Carol” from Renée Roden:
- Get copies of the text: We have it available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle eBook versions. Both are $5. It’ll work the best if everyone has their own copy, which you can indicate in your invitation. Or get a few copies yourself and share if you have to. Since our version is formatted as a play and uses Dickens’ own abridgements, everyone participating will need to access.
- Gather friends to read together: There are more than 40 voices in this piece. (That is, if you split the narrator up into five parts, which we recommend.) But you don’t have to have 40 friends to read this. Try this at your home or hold it at a parish or in a community center.
- Assign parts: There are around 10 voices per chapter or stave, in Dickensian lingo, and each reader could be assigned a different role for each stave, if you like. Or, five readers could divide the narrator parts, four readers could take main roles, and four readers could divvy up the crowd characters. Marking the cast list — assigning readers to each role before you start — is a great way to begin your evening or afternoon together and ensures that you can keep track of who is reading what when you’re deep in the narrative.
- Choose a time: “A Christmas Carol” takes roughly two hours to read aloud together. It’s the perfect activity for a snowy December Saturday or dark winter’s night. You could read it all in one go, divide it up into two evenings, or have a dinner or lunch break as an intermission. Fezziwig’s party is a great opportunity to take a short break and have a bite to eat or take an extended intermission and have a jig, if you’re up for it.
- Feed your carolers: Ensure you have water (and/or Fezziwig-approved drinks like some spiced mulled wine) to keep yourselves hydrated during the endeavor. And no one says Bah, Humbug to snacks.
- Keep Christmas in your heart: Just because you’re reading doesn’t mean you can’t experiment. The minor characters here leave a lot of room for interpretation! Let the Spirits of Christmas past and present and those to come move you — this could be the moment to break out your cockney accents or your posh RP dialect, make bold choices for a character, try something new. Perhaps you feel like standing up and acting something out; perhaps you all prefer to read ensconced in cozy chairs and blankets. Enjoy the fun of reading a timeless classic out loud together and putting your own communal spin on it. And God bless you, each and every one.