The Book Nerd’s Guide to Picking the Right Christmas Carol

But wait, there’s more. Personally, one of my favorite parts of this most wonderful time of the year is seeing how many adaptations of A Christmas Carol I can cram into my eyeballs in a single month. Why? Because A Christmas Carol is a work of pure genius. Charles Dickens managed to write the quintessential Christmas novel by making it spooky, silly, thought-provoking, and heartwarming—all while adding heaping doses of social commentary. It’s not often I reread the classics, but I pull this one out almost every year.
Thus, the viewing frenzy. Of course, not all adaptations are made equal. Some hew closer to the book than others. Some are light-hearted, while others are nightmare fuel. All of them have the advantage of being based, in whatever small way, on the greatest Christmastime novel this side of Tiny Tim’s empty chair. Here’s how to find the right one for you.

A Christmas Carol (1951)
Pro: This particular version is almost universally agreed upon as The Standard, and rightly so. Here before us is a Scrooge who gets at both the cantankerous elements of a dastardly businessman and the underlying humanity of a ne’er-do-well returned from the brink.
Con: The film does, however, take some narrative liberties, adding in backstories where none existed before. Maybe knowing the fate of Scrooge’s mother works for you, and maybe it doesn’t. Though admittedly, nothing here is more far-fetched than what is to come…

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)
Pro: It’s Scrooge McDuck in, literally, the role he was born to play. That he does his own bookkeeping seems even more in character than the original Ebenezer Scrooge.
Con: Outside of Scrooge, there’s some serious miscasting going on. No one’s buying Goofy as Marley because 1) if Scrooge had had Goofy as a partner for years, he wouldn’t have survived to old age, and 2) Goofy couldn’t swindle the poor if he tried. Seems to me the big lug would have made a less-scolding Ghost of Christmas Past than Jiminy Cricket.

Scrooged (1988)
Pro: Well, Bill Murray, for one. While it’s not a one-for-one adaptation, Murray manages to be hilariously awful as a Scrooge stand-in. Perhaps that is what a life of receiving five pounds of veal from Santa brings to a personality.
Con: It’s a crying shame that the movie within the movie, Scrooge, starring Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim, did not come to fruition in the real world.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Pro: Where do I even begin? For a movie in which even the vegetables join in on the musical decimations of Scrooge’s character, the story is remarkably similar to Dickens’s original—probably because Gonzo is on hand to narrate the proceedings as Dickens himself. And that’s not even mentioning Michael Caine, turning in a stellar dramatic performance as the main miser, despite being surrounded by a sea of felt.
Con: A distinct underuse of Sam Eagle, and a distinct surplus of underprivileged mice families.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009)
Pro: Robert Zemeckis’s animated effort is tremendously faithful to the original story and plays up the frightening elements to greater effect than any other adaptation. Scrooge is legitimately pants-soiling scared of Marley, not just warily inconvenienced. (I, myself, found the whispering flame-bodied Ghost of Christmas Past utterly traumatic.)
Con: The reviews of the animation tend to fall into one of two camps: it will either take your breath away or make you feel like you’re navigating a Dickensian video game. But what’s not in doubt: you’ll be able to see clearly every pore on the old skinflint’s face.
 
 
And a special mention goes to Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol, which, while only eight minutes long, proves that Mel Blanc can create an even more frightening specter than Jacob Marley. Being haunted by a live, wily Bugs is probably more hazardous to one’s health than any of the ghosts of Christmas. On the downside, it’s difficult to suspend disbelief with Yosemite Sam as a crotchety Victorian London banker, not only because of the dialect differences, but also because I find it a dubious prospect that Yosemite Sam could ever be successful enough at a venture to amass a fortune.