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Christmas according to Dickens; A Christmas Carol; Ebeneezer Scrooge; A Christmas Carol and Christianity
A Resource by Mark D. Roberts |
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Christmas According to Dickens
by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts
Copyright © 2006 by Mark D. Roberts
Note: You may download this resource at no cost, for personal use or for use in a Christian ministry, as long as you are not publishing it for sale. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due. For all other uses, please contact me at mark@markdroberts.com. Thank you.
2006
My Favorite Book 
Part 1 of series: Christmas According to Dickens (2006) 
Posted for Wednesday, December 13, 2006
I have ambivalent feelings about "get-to-know-you" questions that ask things like: "What is your favorite movie?" or "What is your favorite vacation spot?" On the one hand, I find it fun to force my mind to answer such narrow questions. On the other hand, pointed questions like these drive me crazy because they are so focused. "My favorite movie?" I want to ask, "In what genre? Comedy? Drama? Adventure?" "My favorite vacation spot?" I want to protest, "Well it all depends. For a rest, I'll take Hawaii. For inspiration, give me the High Sierra. For adventure, I'll take Europe." I have a hard time choosing just one movie or one vacation spot.
So I'm about to do something that might make me a little bit crazy. I'm going to claim to have a favorite book (not counting the Bible, which pastors always have to like the best). Are you ready? Here I go: My all-time favorite book is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Immediately my mind starts protesting, flooding my consciousness with other options for my favorite book, including: A Tale of Two Cities, Les Misérables, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I could make a good case for any of these. But A Christmas Carol still wins the prize for my favorite book.
Notice, I didn't say "best book." Here Les Misérables would get the nod, I think. I wouldn't even content that A Christmas Carol is Charles Dickens's finest book. A Tale of Two Cities or David Copperfield would get my vote in this category. But, still, A Christmas Carol is my favorite book, favorite in the sense of most beloved.
And favorite also in the sense of most frequently read. For several years now I've made it part of my Christmas tradition to read A Christmas Carol in its entirety. Now, as you probably know, that's not as impressive as it sounds, because the book is relatively short. One can read it in less than two hours. When Dickens himself used to do public, oral readings of the book, he'd take only three hours or so. In truth, A Christmas Carol really isn't a novel. It's more of a novella, or, as Dickens himself labels it, "Ghost Story of Christmas."
Why do I love A Christmas Carol as much as I do? It has many things going for it. It's short enough to be read and re-read with ease. Its main theme is Christmas, one of my favorite events of the year. It's filled with mouthwatering descriptions of luscious food and drink. It's got lots of suspense and lots of humor. And, of course, it's a salient example of Dickens's inimitable narrative style, a kind of "I'm-your-friend" storytelling that draws the reader into the tale. But none of this accounts adequately for my love of A Christmas Carol. It ranks as my favorite book because of what happens in the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge . . . and because of what happens in my heart through his experience. |
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If you want to decipher some of the delightful yet peculiar language in A Christmas Carol, I'd recommend The Annotated Christmas Carol edited by Michael Patrick Hearn.
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This is the first post in a series I'm calling Christmas According to Dickens. In fact, this series is a new and improved and expanded version of a series I began two years ago, on December 26, 2004. Some of the posts in this current series will be improved editions of what I wrote a couple of years ago. Other posts will be completely new. (The earlier series, by the way, was interrupted by the tsunami in southeast Asia, which turned my attention away from Dickens.)
Why am I doing this? Partly because I love A Christmas Carol and like to talk about what I love. But I also think that this wonderful little book can help us focus on the true meaning of Christmas. So I will be reading Dickens, not just as a lover of his work, and not as a scholar of English literature, which I am not, but as a Christian pastor, which I am. One of the questions I want to ask along the way, in fact, has to do with the presence of Jesus in A Christmas Carol. Does he show up? If so, how? And why in this way?
I also want to get back to a question I began to ponder in 2004, namely: Why did Ebenezer Scrooge change? Again, my point isn't mere curiosity. I'm also interested in the larger question of what transforms people.
If you'd like to do some reading on your own, let me suggest a number of helpful websites:
If you’re interested in Dickens and/or A Christmas Carol, there are a wealth of web-based resources. I’ll list a few. I’m sure you can find many others if you look. Much of what I have summarized in this post comes from these sites.
Featured Audiobook: A Christmas Carol Audiobook, by Charles Dickens
Read by Jim Dale
Jim Dale is perhaps the best known and most loved reader of books in the world owing to his memorable preformances of the Harry Potter series. It's hard to imagine a better combination than Dickens's classic tale and Dale's matchless interpretations.
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Featured Book: The Annotated Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens,
edited with introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn
This beautiful edition of Dickens's A Christmas Carol includes wonderful illustrations and extensive commentary on the text, plus a fine introduction to Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol. If you love this classic story, I'd urge you to treat yourself to this book. It would also make a wonderful Christmas present for the person who has everything except this fine volume.
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The Man Who Invented Christmas
Part 2 of the series: Christmas According to Dickens (2006)
A new and improved version of a post put up on December 26, 2004
Posted for Thursday, December 14, 2006
In 1988 the Sunday Telegraph of London gave Charles Dickens the title of “The Man Who Invented Christmas.” If you’re not familiar with the history of Christmas celebrations, this may seem like an enormous exaggeration. But when you look more closely, the Telegraph’s hyberbole turns out to be closer to the truth than you might expect.
Of course Christians had been celebrating the birth of Christ for centuries before Charles Dickens came along. And northern Europeans also had their winter festivals, both pagan and secular. But in England at the turn of the nineteenth century, Christmas had almost vanished from the scene. There were several reasons for this disappearance. In part, the continued influence of conservative Reformed Christians–who believed that people should do only what the Bible commands, and therefore should not celebrate Christmas, especially given its popular excesses–meant that for many in England Christmas was not a valid holiday.
But even though Christians of this Puritan stripe had actually outlawed Christmas in the 17th century during their brief flirtation with political power, their efforts had been largely unsuccessful. The disappearance of Christmas from English culture had much more to do with the social impact of industrialization and urbanization. As large numbers of people left their ancestral villages to move to the large cities, they also left behind most of their cultural traditions, such as the celebration of Christmas. Moreover, in the cities, bosses weren’t inclined to encourage a holiday that meant a day off from work, especially a day of paid vacation. (Ebenezer Scrooge’s reticence to give Bob Cratchit a holiday on Christmas wasn’t that unusual in his day.)
Another implication of big city life in Victorian England was widespread poverty and human suffering. Although many people worked in factories and offices, wages were low and living conditions poor. This was an abiding concern for Charles Dickens, especially in the fall of 1843. Amid his busy writing career, he was working hard to raise support for institutions that educated and otherwise helped the urban poor of England. |
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Charles Dickens, in a classic drawing
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In October 1843 a trip to Manchester poured fuel on the flame of Dickens’s passion for the poor. As he spoke a the Athenaeum, an institution devoted to caring for the poor in Manchester, Dickens's heart was strangely moved. Moreover, he had stayed with his beloved sister Fan (the name of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dear sister in A Christmas Carol), who had two young sons, one of whom was frail and sick (not unlike Tiny Tim). So in October Dickens began to write A Christmas Carol. According to his own testimony, his writing of this short book was rather a spiritual experience.
A Christmas Carol was published on December 19, 1843. All 6,000 copies of the first edition were sold by December 22. The book became instantly popular, though the high cost of printing, including the fine illustrations, limited Dickens’s profits. Before long, however, vast numbers of people in England and America knew the story, not only from reading the book, but also from dramatic presentations and public readings by Dickens himself.
Because our own celebrations of Christmas have been so strongly influenced by Dickens, we can easily overlook his special contributions to our traditions, such as:
• Christmas as a one (or two) day celebration rather than the traditional twelve.
• Christmas as an occasion for family and close friends to gather for luscious food, singing, dancing, and games.
• Christmas as a time for being generous to the poor.
So close was the connection between Charles Dickens and Christmas that, when he died in 1870, a young woman who heard of it was aghast. “Dickens dead?” she exclaimed. “Then will Father Christmas die too?” Well, as it turns out, Father Christmas didn’t die along with his greatest promoter, Charles Dickens. The influence of this man, and most of all his masterful novella, A Christmas Carol, guaranteed that Christmas would be kept for generations upon generations.
In my next post I'll focus on one of the essential elements in a Dickens Christmas, something I believe we all should include in our holiday celebrations today.
Featured Book: The Annotated Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens,
edited with introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn
This beautiful edition of Dickens's A Christmas Carol includes wonderful illustrations and extensive commentary on the text, plus a fine introduction to Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol. If you love this classic story, I'd urge you to treat yourself to this book. It would also make a wonderful Christmas present for the person who has everything except this fine volume.
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The Real Business of Christmas
Part 3 of series: Christmas According to Dickens (2006)
Posted for Friday, December 15, 2006
In yesterday's post I began to explain the impact of Charles Dickens, especially through A Christmas Carol, upon our celebrations of Christmas. In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration to describe him, in the words of the London Sunday Telegraph, as "the man who invented Christmas."
Dickens's influence upon our Christmas traditions is keenly felt today when it comes to charitable giving. In this season I will receive at least a couple dozen requests to donate money to worthy causes. Moreover, I will make one of these requests on behalf of my church, which depends on an exceedingly strong December to finish the year in the black. To be sure, Dickens didn't invent the notion that giving befits the Christmas season. One could track this idea back to the Magi in the Christmas story, if not to God's gift of His own Son. But seeing Christmas a special time for donating money to charity, especially to the poor, is a perspective Dickens popularized.
The tone of seasonal charity is struck early and often in A Christmas Carol. Early in the first stave (chapter), Ebenezer Scrooge receives an unwelcome Christmas Eve visit from his nephew. When his Uncle Scrooge questions the value of Christmas, Fred responds:
"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round–apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that- as 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 people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
Even apart from its religious significance, Fred sees Christmas as worthwhile because it is a time of unusual generosity. Of course Scrooge doesn't buy into this one bit.
No sooner had Fred left his uncle alone than "two portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold" dropped in on Mr. Scrooge. One explained his business thus:
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
When Scrooge is unmoved, the man explains, "We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices." Of course Scrooge wants nothing to do with their efforts to make provision for the poor, exclaiming: "It's not my business. . . . It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's." |
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The two "portly gentlemen" from a stage
production in Omaha, Nebraska
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But some ghostly interference in Scrooge's life changes his opinion on the matter of his business, especially at Christmastime. When visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, Scrooge attempts to compliment him by saying, "But you were always a good man of business," to which the ghost responds:
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
Then Marley's ghost adds an extra note about Christmas:
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?"
Notice that if Jacob Marley had imitated the Wise Men, he wouldn't have been led to worship the Christ child, but rather to be generous to the poor. This, rather than the religious meaning of Christmas, is central to Dickens's vision of the holiday.
As Scrooge is visited by Marley and his coterie of ghosts, his heart softens towards all people, especially the poor. Thus when his transformation is complete in Stave 5, the very first thing Scrooge does is to purchase a giant turkey for the family of his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit. Then, as he is walking about on Christmas morning, he runs into the same portly gentlemen who had the unfortunate experience of meeting Scrooge the previous day. Yet, now, things are quite different. Scrooge approaches them, offers them Christmas greetings, and then whispers something in the ear of one of the men. Here's the following dialogue:
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?"
"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him. "I don't know what to say to such munificence–"
"Don't say anything please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?"
The primarily and most obvious proof of Scrooge's transformation is not simply his delight in Christmas, nor his attendance at church, nor even his joining his nephew's Christmas party. Rather, the proof that Scrooge is a changed man is seen in his exceptional generosity, both with the Cratchit family in particular and with all needy people in general.
So when Dickens concludes that Scrooge "knew how to keep Christmas well," he means more than that he abolished "Bah! Humbug!" in favor of "Merry Christmas!" Ebenezer Scrooge kept Christmas well by becoming "as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world." This goodness is seen especially in his generosity both at Christmas and throughout the year. He learned the truth that eluded Jacob Marley in this life, namely: "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business." These became the business of Ebenezer Scrooge, even as they are the business of Christmas.
Practical Tips for Doing the Business of Christmas
I expect that many of my readers have already made charitable gifts during this season, or that such gifts and their destinations are already planned. That's great. But if you find yourself unsure of where to give, or if you've just been moved by the example of Mr. Scrooge to do a little more "Christmas business," then let me suggest some excellent giving opportunities.
First, as a pastor who's keenly aware of the challenges and opportunities associated with church finances, I'd encourage you to make an extra gift to your church (if you have one). Over the years, extra year-end giving from my own members and from others has enabled us, not only to finish the year in the black, but also to share even more generously with others in need.
| Second, if you want to make a special gift to help the poor, I can think of no better channel for your giving than World Vision. World Vision is a Christian organization that seeks to care for the physical needs of the poor and, perhaps more importantly, to empower the poor to overcome poverty. What you give to World Vision won't be eaten up in administrative expenses, but will almost entirely go to people in need. There are lots of ways for you to designate your giving to World Vision. Their "Ways to Give" page presents a variety of options and giving levels. It takes about three minutes to make a gift, or one minute if you have given to World Vision before and they have your personal data online. |
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| Third, Hugh Hewitt made me aware of the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, an organization committed to helping injured Marines and their families. This group has been certified for their financial integrity, and it has already channeled several million dollars to injured Marines and their loved ones. So, as you think of those who have made great sacrifices in service to our country, you may want to make a donation to the Semper Fi Fund. I'd encourage you to visit their website, especially the "How You Can Help" page. You can make a donation in a couple of minutes, and you can make it in honor of a specific Marine, if you wish. For more information, you can check Hugh's post on the subject. |
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Finally, of course there are many, many other worthy charitable organizations that need your help in this season. If you don't follow my specific leads, that's fine. But, by all means, do some special year-end giving. Be sure to do your Christmas business!
Featured Book: The Annotated Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens,
edited with introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn
This beautiful edition of Dickens's A Christmas Carol includes wonderful illustrations and extensive commentary on the text, plus a fine introduction to Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol. If you love this classic story, I'd urge you to treat yourself to this book. It would also make a wonderful Christmas present for the person who has everything except this fine volume.
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