The Case for Ebenezer

My interest in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol began one Christmas eve when, as a small child, my parents turned on network radio to listen to what, even then, had become a classic Christmas eve festivity: Lionel Barrymore’s presentation of the Dickens story.

Radio was a medium that required the imagination to paint scenes far more colorful, and to concoct monsters far scarier, than anything motion pictures or television have ever been able to present. With radio, the listener was the stag...