East Montpelier raconteur Willem Lange has been delivering his reading of Charles Dickensâ beloved âA Christmas Carol: A Ghost Storyâ every year since 1975. For those 45 years, he has performed the version Dickens presented in public readings some 127 times including in the United States.
âDickens had the gift of finding the sensitive spot in each of us â rather like scratching a puppy in a particular place and making it wave a hind leg,â Lange said. âI love the moment in the story when Scrooge, emerging from the horror of seeing his plundered corpse in his own bedroom, wakes to the joy of his new-born self, tries tentatively to laugh, and the amused audience laughs along with him.â