Christmas cards, Christmas trees and Christmas carols: A great deal of the holiday traditions Americans hold dear achieved widespread popularity in the late 1800s in England.

However, Britain’s holiday pantomime plays, with their songs, gender-crossing actors and audience participation, never caught on in the States. Now, with its production of “A Christmas Carol,” the Butler Little Theatre brings the pantomime style to the American stage wrapped in Dickens’ classic tale.

The audience realizes that this is not a traditional telling from the moment the lights go up.

The cast breaks the fourth wall to explain that Scrooge (played by Thom Hilliard) is running late. Additionally, the characters are dealing with the frustrations of a low-budget production (one character bemoans the cheapskates running the show).

They have to correct one another’s lines. The towering height of the Ghost of Christmas Present is obtained by the use of a visible footstool. In the first act, the terrifying appearance of Scrooge’s partner Marley, returned from the grave, is interrupted when the characters realize that the “ghost effects didn’t show up.”

Not only do the characters know that they’re in a play, but they also want the audience to be part of it. The players ask the audience to sing along with carols, play holiday party games, and otherwise involve themselves in the business of moving the show along.

It’s not all fun and games though, especially for the actors.

The members of this small cast each play a half-dozen characters with a variety of accents and affectations to differentiate them. This fact necessitates numerous quick costume changes and an extensive and skilled backstage crew. The cast, especially Katy Wayne and Kyrie Lockhaiser, shoulder the task with aplomb.

Wayne’s Ghost of Christmas Past is hilarious (and gets the best special effect of the show) while Lockhaiser captures the wickedness of a washerwoman who would steal the clothes from a corpse’s body.

Hilliard’s Scrooge moves effortlessly between self-assurance, regret and redemption. Jud Stewart and Jerry Johnston have an easy bickering relationship through all their characters. Johnston’s voice seems especially made for Dickens’ language, and Stewart captures exasperation through just a sigh or an eye roll. Jordan Meals’ cheery insouciance as Ben, a stagehand, never wavers as he is tasked with ridiculous jobs including manipulating puppets, playing a street urchin, and more.

Director Casey Bowser sews all of these pieces together with a sparse set and a sense of completion when he brings an end to all the kinetic energy displayed by placing the cast in the same symmetrical spots at the beginning and end of the show.

Originally debuting at the BLT in 2004, “A Christmas Carol” now, nearly two decades later, has three of the four actors returning for the revival.

Ron Lockwood, a BLT linchpin who portrayed Scrooge in the original production, has died in the interim, and Paul Haughey, the author of this adaptation and a life member of the BLT, passed away several years ago. The memories of those men and their work are constantly with the cast and crew, according to Bowser.

Don’t go to the BLT’s “A Christmas Carol” expecting the traditional. Instead, bring your best caroling voice and sense of fun. That’s the thing about traditions: They must be continually adapted to the time. We send Christmas emails instead of dropping cards into the post, and we stream carols instead of singing them around pianos.

The question becomes, how do you update a classic without losing the core? At its heart, Dickens’ work is a story of the redemptive nature of the season and how the memories of those no longer with us can strengthen and move us to a place of joy.

With its glee and laughter, BLT’s “A Christmas Carol” is a show that can soften even the hardest of Scrooge-like hearts.