Chaplain delivers a Christmas classic to residents
Friday, December 15, 2006 -- John Driscoll
Take one Christmas classic; add a good reader and you’ve got the recipe for some enjoyable December listening sessions at Burnbrae Gardens.

The Rev. David Shepherd, a retired United Church minister and chaplain at the Campbellford home has been reading Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on Friday mornings to a reading group of residents at the home.

The residents are really enjoying the sessions, says April Anderson, life enrichment co-ordinator at the home. “A lot of our residents can’t read for themselves because they can’t see the small print,” she points out.

As chaplain at the home since 1999, Shepherd attends the weekly church services by different denominations.

He says he was inspired to start the reading because he likes the story of Scrooge and has enjoyed CBC broadcasts of the work. Reading the book over several weeks works very well because Charles Dickens wrote it as a series of newspaper articles that naturally breaks into chapters, he explains.

This week, before a group of about 20 people, he reached the section of the story dealing with Scrooge’s encounter with “Christmas Yet To Come”, the third of the three Christmas spirits who visit the miser on Christmas Eve.

“Some people react to the reading, but with others it’s hard to tell,” he says. “I am certainly enjoying it.”

Reading to someone and being read to is of tremendous value but has become something of a lost art, says Shepherd who rehearses his readings before presenting them to the reading group.

The movies and plays adapted from the popular A Christmas Carol are wonderful but there is something special about the written word, he says. “It allows the imagination to fill in the details.”