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SUMMARY: 52 LITTLE LESSONS FROM A CHRISTMAS CAROL is a street-level tour through this much-loved tale of bitterness-turned-benevolence. Bob Welch pauses along the way to examine the wisdom and people Scrooge spent much of his disregarding in favor of his own selfish pursuits. Welsh throws open the shutters on what sometimes is mistaken for a simple, heartwarming Christmas story, revealing a significance that extends far beyond the holiday season. He reminds us that if there is mercy for Ebenezer Scrooge, there must be deliverance in equal measure for us all. (from back cover)

I have watched many versions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL but have only read the original story once . Always looking to find a good book to read, I came across 52 LITTLE LESSIONS FROM A CHRISTMAS CAROL at a thrift store and thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t what I was expecting, however, I have underlined and written notes in the margins throughout the book.

Although the title is catchy the 52 Little Lessons makes the book a little clunky. All I can think is that there are 52 weeks in a year, but this is not a book you would want to spread out over an entire year. There is also crossover of some topics that would lend itself to creating larger study units in small quantities.

It helps to understand the author’s observations if you know the story (either reading or watching) but it is not totally necessary. Walsh explains the situations from A CHRISTMAS CAROL in enough detail to so the reader can understand. Even though the focus is A CHRISTMAS CAROL there are other examples thrown in as well as not to bog down to much in the world of Dickens.

The book is offered by a Christian publisher so most of the lessons lean toward Christian perspective and Christian life choices. I enjoyed enough to keep the book and read again. ( )

This book really didn't have anything exceptional in it. I have read A Christmas Carol every year for the past... um, more than five years (I forget when I started this annual reading.) I was really hoping for something that could get into the core of Dickens's tale and help me to see lessons that I hadn't found myself before. This did not give me that. Every lesson the author found was something that I could have found myself. Most which I already was aware of. Don't get me wrong, it was good for me to see some of the lessons in the book rearticulated in a different way, but I didn't feel this book had enough depth to be worth the time it took me to read it. I was also disappointed by the fact that the author couldn't even find 52 lessons in Dickens's book, but had to rely on some of the movies (and missing one or two lessons he could have found in the book.) While bringing in some of the lessons from movies might not have been bad, I really wanted the focus on the book, and if, in the midst of explaining a lesson the author drew examples from the films I wouldn't have minded at all, but there are lessons dedicated only to parts of the movies that were not originally in the book.

What's worse, is that the author probably should have re-read (and re-watched) his material. There were at least two errors that I caught. The first mistake was in Lessons 16 Life Is Best Lived When You're Awake. 'I never noticed that. --Scrooge, in the 1984 movie version, after the Ghost of Christmas Past points out that Belle "resembled your sister."' There is, in fact, no part in that movie where the ghost tells Scrooge that Belle resembles his sister. I suppose one could argue that the actresses do indeed resemble each other, and in the story, the two women are filled with joy, love and Christmas spirit, but the ghost never compares the two. Instead, it tells Scrooge that Fred, his nephew, resembles Fan (Fred's mother.) The author easily could have corrected this without effecting his lesson. The second error that I caught was in Lesson 44 Don't Give Expecting to Receive. In the chapter, the author states that "Scrooge's calling a cab for the little boy because the turkey would be too heavy for the lad to carry may well have been the man's first expression of empathy." I was never, in any of my readings of the book, under the impression that the little boy carried the turkey to the Cratchit's house. The book says that Scrooge told the boy to "Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it." He told the boy he'd give him a shilling (or half-a-crown if he was quick) to bring the turkey to him, but it never said that he gave him the money to buy the turkey. It says that "the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried." In other words, he paid for the turkey, and recompensed the boy separately. So he bought the turkey himself, and recompensed the boy for the time and effort it took him to go and fetch it, along with the man who carried it. None of the movies were ever under the impression that the boy was the one to carry the turkey to Bob Cratchit's either. Some show the man who delivered the turkey as having his own cart, and some show Scrooge paying for the cab as it says in the book, but none show the little boy carrying it. As with the other mistake, the lesson would not have been effected very much by the correction of the mistake.

I probably would have been more forgiving of these mistakes had I felt that I learned much from the book, but it was a very touchy-feely book that, while sweet, didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, and thus, I was already frustrated by it by the time I found these mistakes. ( )