It
was written during a six-week period in 1843, while Charles Dickens was working
on installments of Martin Chuzzlewit,
which was not a success with readers. It was different that the author’s other
works; it was considerably shorter, and it was not to be read in installments
but published as a complete work. Dickens must have felt the pressure of the
tepid response to Chuzzlewit, given the successes of The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas
Nickleby and Oliver Twist. Was he
losing his magic touch with readers?
He
was not. A
Christmas Carol was a huge success. It didn’t make Dickens much money
(he produced a rather elaborately illustrated and bound edition) but it
solidified his reputation.
And
more than that, in its own way it codified what we might call “cultural
Christmas” for generations to come. It was adapted for countless plays,
musicals, movies and television programs, and “Scrooge” passed into the English
lexicon as a synonym for meanness and miserliness.
Rereading
it today, one finds it’s lost none of its charm. The writing is vivid and
expressive, almost breathless at times. The characters, even with the
familiarity of a story that’s more than 170 years old, come alive in Dickens’
hands. Even having the plot of the visits by the ghost of the dead business
partner and the three spirits of Christmas virtually imprinted in our cultural
DNA doesn’t prevent the story from seeming fresh and new.
What
Dickens could do with language and descriptions still inspires a kind of awe. Here
is how the reader comes face-to-face with Ebenezer Scrooge himself:
“But
he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping,
scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which
no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and
solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his
pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his
thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was
on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature
always about him; he iced his coffee in the dog days; and didn’t thaw it one
degree at Christmas.”
 |
| Charles Dickens |
The
spirits, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, Scrooge’s nephew, and the other characters all
receive this kind of description. And even though Dickens violates the modern writing
dictate of “show, don’t tell,” it doesn’t matter here, because he writes such a
rousing good story that we don’t care about dictates.
Does
A Christmas Carol replace the
nativity story? Of course not. That was not Dickens’ intention, not it is how
we read and understand the story today. But it established itself as a
Christmas classic when it was published, and it remains a classic today. It is,
however, a story of self-recognition, redemption and change. And a wonderful
tale in the bargain.
Illustration: Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball by
John Leech, from the first edition of A Christmas Carol in 1843.
