Where to catch A Christmas Carol in Boston, starting at the hotel where Dickens first read it in America

The hotel's historic Press Room hosts A Christmas Carol readings on Saturday, Dec. 19 at 7 PM and Sunday, Dec. 20 at 2 PM and 5:30 PM. Veteran actor Johnny Kinsman reads the story while vocalist Ann Moss and multi-instrumentalist Justin Ouellet weave in carol tunes and foley sound effects, and Parker House historian Susan Wilson opens with the story of Dickens and the hotel. The show is for ages 6 and up, and refunds are available up to seven days before.

That Press Room has its own history, too. The hotel's timeline says a six-year-old John F. Kennedy gave his "first public speech" there in 1923, and he held his bachelor party in the same room in 1953.

The Omni Parker House is running two holiday pop-up bars this season, according to the reading's event page. Ebenezer's Bar at Parker's Bar leans into the darker, Dickens side of the season, and Blitzen's at The Last Hurrah goes merry and bright. Blitzen's opens Friday, Nov. 27 and pours daily from 4 PM to midnight, with cocktail recipes from Julie Reiner, a co-founder of New York's Clover Club and a judge on Netflix's Drink Masters. The Last Hurrah takes its name from the 1956 novel inspired by James Michael Curley, who was a Parker House regular.

Parker's Restaurant has its own claims to fame. The hotel says the Boston cream pie and Parker House rolls came out of Parker's after French chef Augustine Anezin was hired to open it in 1865, and JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier at table 40 in Parker's Restaurant in 1953.

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol runs Friday, Dec. 11 through Sunday, Dec. 20, with Will Lyman, the longtime narrator of PBS's Frontline, as Scrooge. Steve Wargo's adaptation is full of 19th-century carols arranged by Dianne Adams McDowell, the vocal arranger for Broadway's A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder, and Steven Maler directs.

Every performance is open captioned. The Saturday, Dec. 19 evening show and the Sunday, Dec. 20 matinee are ASL-interpreted, and the show runs about two hours with one intermission. Students can get $25 rush tickets in person at the box office starting two hours before curtain, and groups of 10 or more save 10%.

WBUR has hosted a reading of A Christmas Carol every year since 2002. This year's is Thursday, Dec. 17 at 7 PM at CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Ave., with doors at 6 PM. Steve Brown, Meghna Chakrabarti, Tiziana Dearing, Ben Brock Johnson and Robin Young read, The Mistletones sing, and there are cookies and hot cocoa at intermission. Ticket sales support Rosie's Place, which opened in 1974 as the first women's shelter in the United States.

Disney's The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert plays Symphony Hall on Sunday, Dec. 27 and Monday, Dec. 28, both at 2 PM, with the Boston Pops and conductor Lawrence Loh. Michael Caine is Scrooge, Kermit is Bob Cratchit, and Gonzo narrates as Dickens with help from Rizzo the Rat. The songs are by Paul Williams, who also wrote "Rainbow Connection."

For a spookier night, Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson reads two Victorian Christmas ghost stories at Old North Church on Saturday, Dec. 12 from 7:30 to 8:30 PM. One is Dickens's The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton, which the church calls a sinister precursor to A Christmas Carol. The other is A.M. Burrage's Smee, where a Christmas Eve game of hide-and-seek in a dark mansion goes very wrong. Josiah Reibstein leads an ensemble playing a live original score.

Everyone sits in the church's box pews. A single ticket is $36, and private pews are $100 for three, $130 for four or $160 for five. For $12 more, a 20-minute crypt tour at 6:30 PM takes you beneath the floorboards to 37 brick tombs holding the remains of 1,100 early Bostonians.

Three of the city's oldest drinking and dining spots sit within a block of each other near Creek Square, according to the Historical Marker Database, a short walk from the Parker House. The Bell in Hand was founded in 1795 by Jimmy Wilson, the city's last known town crier, and its marker says the only time it ever closed was Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933. Women were not allowed in until the late 1960s, and in the early days last call was 9 PM and the last round was on the house.

Union Oyster House has served food since 1826 and calls itself America's oldest restaurant. Daniel Webster was a constant customer at its oyster bar. Around the corner, The Green Dragon Tavern carries the name of the tavern established in 1654 where, its site says, plans for the march on Lexington and Concord were overheard.

Across the river in Charlestown, Warren Tavern dates to 1780, calls itself the oldest tavern in Massachusetts and says it once welcomed George Washington and Paul Revere.