10/25/25
I've finally gotten to the stage in the proofreading process where I'm not finding any substantial errors in "The Sacred Carol;" and where I'm reinstating things I'd changed, earlier. That's when it's time to call it done. For a while, there, I was just reading the entire book through, once every day (taking a full day to do it).

I'm now on-hold for one illustration, and the cover. In the meantime, I've been querying my AI bot partner about how best to spend the money I have remaining for publicity. Not surprisingly, I find that I don't have enough money to do it right. What I want to avoid, is throwing this donation down a hole--and it would be very easy to do.

As I search on YouTube and Facebook, I see that Johnny Depp will be playing Scrooge in a new, "darker" version of "A Christmas Carol." I'm so far out of the fashion loop, that I don't even know in what sense this is a "comeback" for him. He must have done something awful, or had a huge falling out with Hollywood.

What it means, from my perspective, is that Charles Dickens "adapted" Mathew and Abby Whittier's original story; then other people adapted his adaptation. In a less secular age, those adaptations actually recaptured something of Abby's intention. But now, they are throwing the story into the secular mud-pit. Disney already threw it into the commercial pit. But this promises to be even worse. And they are throwing a lot of money into promotions. It's all over social media.

And here is "little old me," going in the other direction with my miniscule promotions budget, restoring "A Christmas Carol" to its original sacredness. Or, as much of it as I could reveal from underneath Dickens' heavy corkscrew redactions, in his second handwritten draft. Enough to prove what he did to it, and enough to reclaim a little of the real Carol.

Do you think anyone will pay attention to me? I'm not expecting to make much of a public splash. I would guess I'll be studiously ignored by everybody, the public and Academia alike.

But what is powerful? Is splash, and glitter, and money, and the authoritarian fist, power? Or is love and spirituality, power?

The video I recently created, introducing this book and its theme, is approximately 50 seconds long. In that 50 seconds, I show five slides. It's very slow-paced, by modern standards. I'm guessing 98% of the people who start to watch it, will be too itchy to finish, and will click out.

But that's a test. Those people would be incapable of understanding this, anyway. I'd just as soon they go watch Johnny Depp's movie. This work is for that 2% who can become absorbed in the video, and feel the spiritual power in it. Those people, I can talk to.

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.