Rick Helley

A Gymnastics Christmas Carol Rick Helley

For many years, a Christmas tradition in my family was to get comfortable in front of the TV set during the Christmas Season, and watch the various screen adaptations of Charles Dickens' wonderful literary masterpiece, "A Christmas Carol," a timeless story I came to love and cherish. One result of my love for "A Christmas Carol" was that in 1979 I decided I wanted to pay tribute to the story by writing my own version. At that time, I was a big fan of gymnastics, and thought it would be a novel approach to write a gymnastics-themed version. Towards the end of the year, I wrote my story, which was published as "A Gymnastic Christmas Carol" in the November/December 1979 issue of "Gymnastics World" magazine, published by SundbySports Publications. Thirty years later, realizing that my Christmases Yet To Come are far fewer in number than my Christmases Past, I decided that this would be an appropriate time to resurrect my story, revise it a bit, and present it in the more enduring form of a book. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy reading this little story, my tribute to Charles Dickens' timeless masterpiece and to Christmas, as much as I did writing it both in 1979 and 2009.