Remembering the Magic of “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden
by Chris Peterson
There are certain shows that become part of your family’s holiday rhythm even if you don’t plan it that way. They just grow into the season. They get woven into the nostalgia of what the holidays felt like when you were young. And for me, nothing signals December more clearly than piling into The Theater at Madison Square Garden every year to see A Christmas Carol. It was never just a night at the theater. It felt like stepping into a tradition that belonged to my family as much as it belonged to New York.
This musical was everywhere in the city during the holidays. It ran every December from 1994 to 2003, which means an entire era of families grew up with it the way we did. And it was a real production. Alan Menken wrote the music. Lynn Ahrens wrote the lyrics. Ahrens and Mike Ockrent wrote the book. Susan Stroman choreographed.
If you stacked any Broadway season with that many heavy hitters, you would call it a smash. So, of course, it felt like an event before the curtain even went up.
What I remember most clearly is that little moment right before the show entered your body. That walk through the lobby where everything felt just slightly enchanted. I have spent the last day trying to confirm whether the lobby was actually decorated to feel like Scrooge’s London. I searched through archives, old programs, fan photos. There is almost no official documentation to confirm it.
But a few random internet comments do say the lobby used to be filled with the shops and street corners of 19th century London. So maybe it never looked exactly how I remember it. But I do remember the feeling. Like you were leaving New York for a moment and easing yourself into Dickens’ world before you even found your seats.
Once you got inside, the production never held back. The scale of it was enormous. The cast was huge. It felt like a true holiday spectacle the way only New York knows how to do it.
And Scrooge was played by so many iconic performers over the years that it became a ritual in itself to see who would take the role each season. Terrence Mann. Tony Randall. Roddy McDowall. Roger Daltrey. Tim Curry. Jim Dale. The talent list reads like Broadway history mixed with a few delightful surprises.
I think the reason the show imprinted itself on me is because of how completely unpretentious it was. It was not trying to reinvent Dickens. It was not trying to be edgy or modern. It was warm and sincere. It was big hearted. It wanted families to come together. It wanted kids to watch a cranky old man learn how to love again. It was a musical designed without an ounce of cynicism, and it is strange how rare that is.
Every December we would go, and every December it hit the same way. That big final moment where Scrooge transforms. The wave of music. The swell of joy. You could feel the entire theater leaning into it. You could feel people forgetting whatever stress they had carried in from the city.
That is the magic of a holiday tradition. Not that it surprises you. But that it reminds you how much you still want to believe in the same things you believed in as a kid.
Looking back now, I realize what a gift it was that this musical ran for as long as it did. Ten seasons is not nothing. Ten seasons means an entire generation now associates the holidays with a very specific version of Dickens that played in a very specific building. And even though you cannot point to a giant archive of lobby photos or behind the scenes videos to prove every detail, the memory lives in the feeling the show created.
It felt like Christmas the second you walked in the door. It felt like being transported into a story you already knew by heart. And it felt like the city itself was inviting you into something warm. That is a rare thing for a place as intense as New York.
I miss the show. I miss that sense of ceremony. And that is the magic of holiday theatre. It becomes part of your personal mythology. It becomes the place where your memories and the story meet. And sometimes that meeting point is exactly where the spirit of the season lives.
Photo Credit: MSG/Radio City Entertainment