“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world.”

In honor of the Christmas season, I present an overview of the adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that I have watched this season:

• FX’s A Christmas Carol – Watched the trailer. Too scary! No thank you.

• A Flintstones Christmas Carol – A surprisingly faithful adaptation, with a modern Stone Age twist; Ebonezer Scrooge, Bob Cragit, Jacob Marbley! Fred is a big humbug for most of it, not nearly good enough for his cool wife, and the Bedrock Community Players set design is unparalleled in its intricacy and quality.

• Mickey’s Christmas Carol – At a more traditional 2018 performance of A Christmas Carol at Ford’s Theatre, a little boy in the audience remarked at intermission “in the version I like, Scrooge is a duck”.  That has always been my definitive Scrooge as well. And when Mickey cuts the pea for dinner! That is Bob Cratchit.  I was shocked to discover it has a 26-minute run time, and is not a feature length film, as it had always seemed to be.

• The Muppet Christmas Carol – Despite lingering loyalties to Mickey’s Christmas Carol, the Muppets might have the best one of all. This adaptation has everything. Music, humor, heart. No cheeses for meeces. Michael Cain. The perfect line reading of “Tiny Tim, who did NOT die”. It’s unbeatable.

Pecan Snowballs

“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an under-done potato. There’s more of gravy than the grave about you, whatever you are!”

My family does not do a prize turkey for Christmas dinner, and an undigested bit of beef, blot of mustard, or crumb of cheese did not sound especially appealing, so hereafter please find instead a cookie recipe for Pecan Snowballs, which my family does do for Christmas dessert. These were accompanied by Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread, and Lemon Squares.

Ingredients

1/2 lb butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsps vanilla

1 cup finely chopped pecans

Confectioners sugar, to sprinkle generously.

Directions

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla til fluffy.

Blend in flour thoroughly.

Add pecans.

Spoon snowballs on to baking sheet and bake at 325 for 20 mins.

Cool and sprinkle with confectioners sugar til as snowy as desired.