PITLOCHRY FESTIVAL THEATRE
A Christmas Carol Education Pack
Contents:
Pg 2: Word Association
Pg3: Attitudes towards Christmas
Pg 4-5: Synopsis of the story
Pg6: Exploring the language
Pgs7-9: Drama activity
Pg 10: Torments of the ghosts
Pg 11: A Christmas Carol quiz
How to use this pack:
This pack is meant for students as an introduction to the story. All quotations are taken from Dickens’ novel and not Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, adapted by Isobel McArthur.
1
Word Association
Write all the words you associate with Christmas and Carol around the ribbons to get you thinking about possible themes in the story.
Christmas
Carol
2
Attitudes towards Christmas
‘.. the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent 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.’
Who said this?:
What does it tell us about them?:
‘What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?’
Who said this?:
What does it tell us about them?:
‘There’s another fellow, my clerk, with fifteen shillings a-week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.’
Who said this?:
What does it tell us about them?:
‘And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!’
Who said this?:
What does it tell us about them?:
‘At this festive season of the year it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.’
Who said this?:
What does it tell us about them?:
‘I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned; they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.’
Who said this?:
What does it tell us about them?:
In your own words: What is the true meaning of Christmas?
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The story…
Everyone is getting ready for Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean, old man, is in his usual cold frame of mind…
Scrooge: “Bah! Humbug!”
His nephew, Fred, comes to invite him for Christmas dinner. Scrooge rudely refuses.
Scrooge: “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding.”
Scrooge also refuses to give money to help the poor, even though he is a very rich man.
Scrooge: “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”
He is uncharitable about giving Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off work.
Scrooge: “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!”
Scrooge is a really miserable man.
That night he goes home and a ghostly figure visits him as he is about to go to bed. The ghost is his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge is sceptical about ghosts.
Scrooge: “There is more of gravy than of grave about you!”
Jacob Marley wears heavy chains around him as a punishment for being so miserable during his life.
Marley: “I wear the chain I forged in life…link by link, and yard by yard.”
He warns Scrooge that he will face the same fate if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is being given the chance to escape the ghostly fate that awaits him.
Marley: “You will be haunted by three spirits.”
The first ghost to visit is the Ghost of Christmas Past.
He takes Scrooge back to his childhood. His father wasn’t a pleasant man and Scrooge was very lonely. Later in life, he gets a job with Fezziwig and we see the memory of a Christmas party. Fezziwig was the life and soul of any party and very kind.
Scrooge: “Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart.”
Seeing his past life starts to melt Scrooge’s frozen heart.
Scrooge also sees his old girlfriend who split up with him because Scrooge loved his money too much.
Belle: “Another idol has displaced me. A golden one.”
Scrooge sees how happy she became with a husband and children.
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Scrooge: “I cannot bear it.”
The second ghost to visit is the Ghost of Christmas Present.
The ghost takes Scrooge to Bob Cratchit’s house, where they see warmth and happiness, even though the family is poor. Tiny Tim is the youngest child and although he is quite poorly, he has a big heart.
Tiny Tim: “God bless us, everyone!”
Ghost of Christmas Present: “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”
They also visit Fred’s house, where Scrooge hears Fred talking about him.
Fred: “His wealth is of no use to him. He doesn’t do any good with it. He loses some pleasant moments with us, which could do him no harm.”
When Scrooge tries to join in with the Christmas games, we see his heart melting a little more.
The third ghost to visit is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
He takes Scrooge to overhear conversations about a man who has just died. Nobody is sad or mournful about it. They see the dead man’s clothes being pawned at the pawnbrokers and the covered figure of a dead man lying on a bed.
Scrooge: “If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man’s death, show that person to me.”
The only people showing emotion are glad because they owed the dead man some money.
Scrooge: “Let me see some tenderness connected with a death.”
They see Bob Cratchit and his family mourning Tiny Tim.
Scrooge sees and realises that the dead man is him.
Scrooge: “I am not the man I was! I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.”
Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning a changed man. He buys the Cratchits a very large turkey. He goes through the streets greeting people and wishing them a merry Christmas. He also goes to Fred’s house for Christmas lunch.
The next day, he gives Bob Cratchit a pay rise.
Scrooge: “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family.”
5
Exploring the language
Using these descriptions of Scrooge, work in groups to draw a picture of him. The bit in bold is different in each description and should be really clear in your image.
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The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue.
…he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone.
2
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue.
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out with generous fire.
3
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue.
…secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
4
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue.
A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin.
6
Drama Activity
In small groups: read a short scene from the text; present a tableau or ‘frozen moment’ that seeks to sum up the spirit of the scene. To do this, you need to think about where characters are positioned in relation to each other, eye contact, gesture, body language, etc. Each group will then show its tableau for other students to observe closely and then discuss what it adds to their understanding.
1. The Christmas Pudding Arrives
You will need: Bob Cratchit
Mrs Cratchit
Scrooge
Optional: Tiny Tim
Martha Cratchit
Peter Cratchit
Text excerpt:
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house, and a pastry cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding. In half a minute, Mrs Cratchit entered: flushed, but smiling proudly: with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so.
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Drama Activity
2. The Family Toast
You will need: Bob Cratchit
Tiny Tim
Scrooge
Ghost of Christmas Present
Optional: Mrs Cratchit
Other Cratchit children
Text excerpt:
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and crackled noisily. Then Bob proposed:
“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”
Which all the family re-echoed.
“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live”.
“I see a vacant seat,”’ replied the Ghost, ”in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”
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Drama Activity
3. The Toast to Scrooge
You will need: Bob Cratchit
Mrs Cratchit
Scrooge
Tiny Tim
Optional: Ghost of Christmas Present
The other Cratchit children
“Mr Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!”
“The Founder of the Feast indeed!” cried Mrs Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”
“My dear,” said Bob, ”the children; Christmas Day.”
”It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, ”on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!”
”My dear,” was Bob’s mild answer, ”Christmas Day.”
”I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said Mrs Cratchit, ”not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy new year! – he’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!”
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.
9
Torments of the ghosts:
“The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”
In A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Marley is described as having a chain around his middle. On this chain are objects which tell us something about Marley. For example, Marley was a mean and greedy character (like Scrooge) and he loved money. On his chain there were keys, padlocks, purses, cash boxes and legal documents to do with his job as a money lender.
Task:
Think of FIVE things that tell us something about your life, your interests and what you are like, e.g. football, chocolate bar, sunglasses…
Draw items on your chain below if you’d like to – or cut and stick images.
Be ready to explain what is on your chain and why.
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A Christmas Carol Quiz
1. What is Scrooge’s first name?
2. Who is Scrooge’s clerk?
3. What relation is Fred to Scrooge?
4. Where does Scrooge work?
5. What does Jacob Marley’s ghost wear around him?
6. Why?
7. Who was Scrooge’s first employer?
8. Who are the ghosts that visit Scrooge? (in the order they appear!)
9. What does Tiny Tim say?
10. What does Bob Cratchit receive the day after Christmas?
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