Do-It-Yourself A Christmas Carol and Cookie Exchange is a first-time event hosted by the English department and will take place in Barefoots Joe Thursday evening.
“It’s kind of an English department Christmas party, but we’re doing it in an English department way,” said David Malone, associate professor of English and acting department chair. “We’ll have one person after another come up on the stage in Barefoots and read…a couple of pages of A Christmas Carol.”
In addition to the reading, Kelsie Leaf, junior English major, and Zach Lancaster, junior art major, will perform live music, Malone said. The event is open to all faculty and students, and attendees are encouraged to bring cookies to share.
“People like Dickens, people like being read to, people like cookies,” Malone said. “A Christmas Carol is kind of a cliché, in a sense. Everybody does it. But the thing that’s interesting to me is when you get back into the text, it’s almost like it’s new again…you don’t get [Dickens’ language] in the Smurfs’ Christmas Carol.”
Joy Moore, director of Barefoots Joe, said the event is a new one for Barefoots, although the coffee shop regularly hosts the release party for The Torch, Union’s annual student-created literary magazine, as well as occasional readings by published authors.
“Besides being an all-around good time, as I suspect it will be, the event celebrates literature and offers that sometimes too rare experience of listening to literary works read aloud,” Moore said. “It’s hard to imagine disliking an event where you can sit back with a hot drink and cookie and listen to a Christmas classic read by friends and professors. Unless, perhaps, you’re a scrooge.”
The reading and cookie exchange will take place 7 p.m. Dec. 4 in Barefoots Joe. A sign-up sheet for anyone wishing to read is available at the front desk of the English department.
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