FOR MORE than 150 years, Charles Dickens’ novel
A Christmas Carol
has been a key part of the mythology and celebration of Christmas in the Western world, whether that is through the myriad stage and screen adaptations that it has spawned, or in its original novel form. With its uplifting themes of charity and goodwill, with its suggestions of an ancient worldly morality embedded in the figures of three Christmas ghosts, with its universal secular message of human redemption, its Victorian morality continues to be inspirational today.
If it was not the only Christmas fable that Dickens' wrote – indeed Christmas was an archetypal setting for Dickens' instructional books – A Christmas Carolwas certainly his most important one. It is also the one that is credited with inventing many of the Christmas traditions still celebrated today.
The celebration of Christmas in England had been in decline since the end of the 17th century. Although medieval Christmas traditions had been outlawed by the puritans, it was really the social impact of urbanisation that came with the industrial revolution that had the most significant impact on the communal customs of Christmas. A new class of low-paid manual workers had little time or money to return to their families to celebrate, so when Dickens’ redemptive hero Ebenezer Scrooge refused to give Bob Cratchit a Christmas holiday, he was reporting on general conditions for urban workers in Victorian times.
By the 1840s, however, the nostalgia associated with the Romantic Movement in literature and painting had invigorated a revival of interest in the winter festival. Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert, introduced his native custom of decorating winter evergreens with candles to Windsor Castle, and the idea soon spread countrywide. The singing of Christmas carols also became popular again, following the publication of several books of traditional Christmas songs, such as A Selection of Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modernby William B Sandy in 1833, and Thomas K Hervey's The Book of Christmasin 1837. Meanwhile, the first Christmas card – a family scene designed by John Callcott Horsley – appeared in 1843.
The instant and enormous popularity of A Christmas Carolfed into this contemporary trend.
In fact, it was the popular thrust of the Christmas setting that was the inspiration for Dickens’ best-known story. Dickens had spent the bulk of 1843 giving lectures on the importance of education in the fight against poverty and fundraising on behalf of a variety of children’s charity schools. As he prepared a political pamphlet based on his speeches, he decided instead to take advantage of the fashionable Christmas narrative to ensure that his social message reached a mass audience.
Having fallen out with his publishers over royalties for Martin Chuzzlewit,Dickens decided to pay for the production of A Christmas Carolhimself. Despite the expense and his own dire financial situation, he insisted on a lavish design – a gold-embossed cover, hand-coloured etchings – and, most importantly, on the low price of five shillings; the book was intended to be affordable to the poor as well as the middle classes. However, A Christmas Carol's instant appeal was to be both a blessing and a curse for Dickens; he would spend the limited profit that he made – and much more – fighting the hundreds of pirated editions that appeared after the first edition was published. But Dickens' had always supplemented his earnings with public readings, so he took to the road on a lecture tour, and A Christmas Carolbecame the most popular fixture in his repertoire.
A Christmas Carolwas written in just six weeks, but Dickens' already had the seeds of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the redeemed anti-hero of A Christmas Carol. His serial The Pickwick Papersincluded a short story entitled The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton, which featured a grumpy gravedigger entitled Gabriel Grub, who is visited by goblins on Christmas Eve who attempt to convince Grub to mend his miserly ways. Where Grub refuses to change and is duly punished, in A Christmas Carol Dickens uses Scrooge's transformation from parsimony to "as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world" to impart a more redemptive moral tale. Having sent his accountant Bob Cratchitt home to his dying son without a Christmas bonus, Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, where he realises the true meaning not just of Christmas, but of universal kindness. He realises that Christmas is "a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." He visits the Cratchitts the following day with a bounty and promises pay rises and compassion for ever more.
Dickens described the fellow-feeling that Scrooge delivers in the final denouement of the book as "The Carol Philosophy" and he would promote this message again and again, in his 1848 Christmas fable The Haunted Manand The Ghost's Bargain, in stories such as A Christmas Treeand The Seven Poor Travellers, and in philosophical musings such as What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older.For Dickens Christmas was a symbol of the potential for all human goodness; a time "that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home!" And in this secular version of Christmas, embodied in the salvation of a memorable miser called Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens' social, moral message has transformed more lives than he could have hoped for.
The West End musical adaptation of Scrooge, starring Tommy Steele, runs at the Grand Canal Theatre until January 2nd. The Ulster Theatre Company presents Scrooge’s Christmas at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght from December 14th-22nd
The Many Faces of Ebenezer Scrooge
BLACKADDER’S CHRISTMAS CAROL
A memorable 1988 Blackadder parody which subverts the morality of Dickens’ tale, as a virtuous Victorian descendant of the Blackadder dynasty, Ebenezer Blackadder, realises that the evil example of his forebears is more fulfilling than his own kindness and charity.
SCROOGED
Richard Donner's 1988 genius film adaptation in which a TV executive, played by Bill Murray, relinquishes his ruthless ambition when the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future teach him the errors of his ways. It ends with a fantastic dance sequence to Annie Lennox and Al Green's version of Put a Little Love in Your Heart.
SCROOGE McDUCK
Donald Duck's misanthropic uncle first appeared in the 1947 comic Christmas on Bear Mountain. He was a recurring antagonist throughout the Donald Duck strips, but is perhaps best known for his most literal incarnation, as Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1983 film Mickey's Christmas Carol.
THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL
1992 film adaptation with Michael Caine's crotchety Scrooge, Kermit the Frog's good-natured Bob Cratchitt and Fozzy Bear's benevolent Fezziwig. Some of the musical numbers, like Kermit's Only One More Sleep Till Christmas, have even joined the repertoire of traditional Christmas songs.
