Pickwick's Christmas (for Bronwyn and Jenny)

 Today is the 22nd day of December.  For my daughters and I that always meant Pickwick's Christmas.
Sometime during the '70's I stumbled across the recording below that included a reading of a Christmas chapter from Dickens's Pickwick Papers.  It begins thus "As brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies, did the four Pickwickians assemble on the morning of the twenty-second day of December..."  It soon became a regular part of my holiday traditions. By the time the girls were born and old enough to listen I had transferred it to cassette tape and each year, on the 22nd of December, we would listen to it in the car as we drove to go shopping or on errands. Charles Laughton does an excellent reading of the tale and after not too many years  the girls could quote most of it from memory.

From this album and then to the cassette tape and this morning on the way to work I'll listene to it on my mp3 player plugged into my car's stereo system.  Times may change, but some traditions are forever golden.  Happy Holidays, especially to the two best daughters in the whole world.  Love, Mom