by Pete Peterson
For 150 years, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, has captivated readers and audiences. It’s one of the most adapted stories in the English language, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t know at least the bare outlines of the tale. So why tell it again? Isn’t Dickens’ original already a masterpiece? Why adapt it again when there are so many other versions already out there? Why do we need another?
That’s a solid pragmatic question, and it probably deserves a direct pragmatic answer. Sadly, I’m a writer, so you’re going to get a roundabout idealistic answer instead.
My penname is “A. S. Peterson,” which has caused no end of confusion for readers of my brother Andrew Peterson’s books, and plenty of confusion for people who know me as Pete, and even further confusion for people who called me Sherman when I was a child. But the one thing no one who knows me has ever called me is my first name, Arthur, which is kind of sad because of all those names, Arthur is the one that I secretly liked the best, and for one reason: it’s the name of a King.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with Arthurian legend, and I’ve always had a hidden sense of pride in sharing a name with such a venerable figure. I can trace that love of knights and errantry all the way back to childhood. I know by heart every image and beat of the glorious ending of Excalibur (set to Wagner’s “Seigfried’s Death”). And I can trace my love of theatre back to Richard Harris shouting, “Run, boy!” at the end of Camelot, my favorite musical. (I’m also delighted that my wife’s name is Jennifer, a modern version of Guinevere.)
So with that love of the Arthurian legendarium, it’s been one of the joys of my life to have the opportunity to work with Malcolm Guite on his forthcoming epic poem, Merlin’s Isle, his four-volume telling of the complete Arthuriad. (Volume 1 coming in 2026 from Rabbit Room Press!). It’s everything I’ve always loved about tales of Arthur and his knights, and it’s accessible and epic and relevant and thrilling and magical and, literally, all the things. And in talking with Malcolm about all of this, we discussed at length the nature of stories and why we retell them. Why does the world need a new Arthurian epic? Why do we feel the call to participate in the generational renewal of certain tales?
Malcolm addresses the question in the Prelude of his epic, saying (in part):
This tale is not for us alone
But for our children too
So take the tale up if you can
And pass it on to maid and man
That it may grow like living grain
Both beautiful and true.’
And so the tale came down the years
In every land and tongue.
And old folk told it through their tears
And gave it to the young.
And even I, in these dark days,
Have heard and found it true.
So I have taken up the tale
And passed it on to you.
This idea of the inheritance of tales is, I believe, the essence of Story itself. Stories don’t merely exist in one form. They are meant to be lived in, to be rehearsed, adapted, reshaped, mined, and passed down. We tell them again and again for joy and for wisdom. We honor them with our retellings. And each time we pass them along, they grow and mean themselves in fresh new ways as each teller takes up the tale.
In Fiddler’s Green (Rabbit Room Press 2010), Jeannot, a knight of Saint John, has the following exchange with Fin Button, the protagonist of the story:
“What do you know of the Knights?” he asked.
Fin shrugged. “I thought knights were only in children’s stories until a few days ago.”
Jeannot smiled. “A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance.”
“Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren’t true. You might be knights, but I don’t see any shining armor,” Fin said.
Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. “Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run.”
We’re in rehearsals for A Christmas Carol right now, and director Matt Logan just told the cast that no matter how often a play has been interpreted, when we take it up, it’s “our turn.” He means that it’s “our turn,” not in the sense of waiting in line at the DMV, but in the sense that this is our moment to step into and participate in an ongoing tradition of human interaction with the past, the present, and the future. We get to inhabit this moment with all of our experiences and perspectives, our wounds, our insights. Telling tales to one another in the dark is one of the things that makes us human. It’s a primal way in which we learn to know each other and the world around us. It’s how God reveals himself to us. It’s how we reveal ourselves to one another. It’s who we are. We tell stories. If the stories are true, we retell them, and retell them, and retell them. Over and over again. Each time bringing something new to the campfire, or, as Tolkien describes it, adding something new to the “Cauldron of Story.”
So yes, this is a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Through the creative process of writing and workshopping, we get to bring our own lenses and experiences to this beloved story. It’s our turn. We’ve taken up the tale. Writer, actor, director, composer, designer, producer, production assistant, crew member, technician: we add our voices to Dickens’ voice and body forth something new, something old. We participate in the grand tradition of the telling of tales.
And as Chip Arnold, who plays Scrooge in the show points out, Dickens was only retelling the Great Story after all–the Nativity. For in the end, what is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge if not an account of God coming down to humankind to rescue us from ourselves. If any story is worth retelling, it’s that one.