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There is a passage about Christmas at sea in
Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, the one published in 1843. And, like the exchange quoted above, it takes place when Scrooge is in the company of the Ghost of Christmas Present. We'll share that in a moment. Today's quote, however, is from an adaptation. It was done for a 1950 vinyl recording of
A Christmas Carol, with
Ronald Coleman as Scrooge. That recording was your editor's introduction to Dickens famous story. It takes some liberties with the original, but even after all these decades, we think it a fine piece and listen to it every year. And like a favorite musical passage, the image of that handshake always resonates.
Still, for the purist, here is the longer treatment by the original artists:
"Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea-on, on-until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him."
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