Dickens in December and Other Enduring Traditions
The clothing and décor have changed, and so has the student body, but the scene in the Headmaster’s House on Thursday, December 13 mirrored a holiday ritual that has occurred on campus virtually every year since at least 1889.
“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it.”
So began Headmaster Temba Maqubela, reading the same words from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that were spoken by the headmasters before him. Groton’s youngest students, the Second Formers (eighth graders), gathered around quietly, listening to the holiday classic.
Mr. Maqubela read the first few pages with extra care, holding a tiny, fragile book. Inside the front cover was an inscription: “Read to the boys of Groton School . . . 1899, 1900, 1901.” On the opposite page was the signature of Samuel Endicott Peabody, the father of Groton School founder Endicott Peabody.
The senior Peabody had read A Christmas Carol ten years before (and possibly in the years in between). In a letter dated December 15, 1889, the school founder wrote to a friend: “The boys sent a petition signed by the whole School asking my Father to come up for this Sunday and read to them. Accordingly, we had a part of that delightful Christmas Carol by Dickens. It is a pleasant sight to see all the boys together in the parlor, clustered around the reader or lying on the floor and to have such ideas of charity and good will given to them in such a persuasive way. There never was a better sermon on the spirit of Xmas time than the carol.” It is possible that the reading of A Christmas Carol began during Groton’s first year, 1884, but the first reference to it, according to school archivist Doug Brown ’57, is the letter from 1889.
The “pleasant sight” of children listening to A Christmas Carol is one of Groton’s enduring traditions, but just an example of what has created the holiday spirit on the Circle in recent weeks. On Saturday night, December 15, the annual Holiday Pops concert filled the Schoolhouse’s Sackett Forum with music, featuring student performers in Soul Sauce, the school’s jazz ensemble, and smaller jazz combos; the chamber orchestra; gospel choir; and the Maqupellas, an a cappella group. Cookie-decorating and holiday card-making enlivened the atmosphere.
Throughout the past two weeks, dorms have decorated their common rooms and held “secret Santa” gift exchanges. Sixth Formers decorated the Forum and the Schoolroom, draping the busts that line the walls with traditional (and untraditional) holiday items and covering the tops of some antique desks with wrapping paper. Late on a recent night, the seniors gathered to decorate gingerbread houses in the Dining Hall, where giant inflatables of Santa and a Hanukah dreidl tower over holiday lights. Groton’s Fifth Formers recently held a holiday party with hot chocolate, cookie decorating, music, and a movie. Coming up is the final of three services of Lessons & Carols and a carol sing during morning chapel service.
No doubt some of these festivities could not have been imagined in the nineteenth century, but others, like the reading of A Christmas Carol, have hardly changed over passing years.
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