Of Misers and Muppets
His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. A Christmas Carol , by Charles Dickens ⸻ You know them, you love them — expressive little stuffed animals so authentically wrinkled that they appear to be made out of nothing but yards of felt and puddles of toddlers' saliva. But what commerce, you may ask, have these children's toys, these Muppets, with pillars of Victorian literature? According to Brian Henson, quite a bit. Setting his sights on none other than Charles Dickens, Himself™, Henson released A Muppet Christmas Carol just in time for Christmas 1992, dedicating the film to his recently deceased father, Jim, Muppet mastermind. In so doing, he initiated decades of Yuletide traditions for families innumerable — presumably, at least. He certainly did for my family. My siblings and I grew up watching the oddly corporeal Muppet ghosts cavorting around Michael Caine's relentlessly stoic Scrooge on at least a semi-annual basis. And yet, if I'm to be ru...