A Christmas Carol in Context: Dickens’ Beloved Festive Fable

A Christmas Carol is one of the most famous stories in the English language. In the nearly two centuries since its publication, the festive tale of greed, ghosts, and goodwill has never been out of print. But it very nearly never existed. The story of how A Christmas Carol came to be is as didactic as the novel itself. How did Dickens fight the publishing establishment to realize his “ghost of an idea”? And why does the story of miserly redemption resonate so enduringly? Read on to reveal all…

The Victorian Era was a time of dramatic societal change. The 1840s were named “the Hungry Forties” due to a tragic cocktail of economic depression, mass unemployment, and rising urban poverty. Rapid industrialization encouraged workers and their families to move into overcrowded cities, forcing a surge in demand for employment, which included children.

Dickens, meanwhile, was entering the 1840s on a wave of success, adulation, and fame. A darling of Victorian literary London, his first four novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge had rendered him a household name. Even Queen Victoria herself was a fan.

But success was not wasted on Dickens. Wealth and prosperity had not always been familiar privileges. The Dickens family might have been affluent, had their wealth not been mismanaged. The second of eight children, Charles was privy to the decline of his family’s status firsthand. His father, John Dickens, was a clerk and earned a good wage. His mother, Elizabeth Dickens, was outgoing and sociable, even attending a ball on the night she gave birth to Charles. But John was financially irresponsible and extravagant, a combination that would eventually bring the family to total financial despair.

Such debt meant a sentence in debtor’s prison for John, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. Therefore, at the age of twelve, Charles left school to work in a factory, where he would spend six days per week pasting labels on jars of shoe polish. He lived alone, in lodgings, away from his mother and siblings. It was this period of hardship and desperation that led young Charles to be so deeply affected by the plight of the poor. In adulthood, these experiences were never far from memory.

By the time Dickens turned 30 in 1842, the sweetness of success had begun to sour. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, his fifth novel, was being drip-fed to fans through serialized snippets. Around the same time as his fifth novel, Dickens’s fifth child entered the world. What might have been a blissful period was in fact one of great anxiety, as Chuzzlewit failed to reach the selling figures of all four previous novels. So much so that his publishers were threatening to reduce Dickens’s salary significantly.

Dickens found himself in fiscal strains. With his wife, Catherine, their five children, and his father’s overhanging debts to maintain, Dickens knew one thing was for sure: he needed a hit.

With cosmic timeliness, the same year saw the publication of a parliamentary report on child labor in Britain’s mines and collieries. The Report of the Children’s Employment Commission made for harrowing reading, revealing that children as young as four were being sent to work in dangerous coal mines and mills, with little concern for their well-being.

Dickens was horrified by the country’s apathy to such cruelty. He wanted to use his high-profile voice to write something in response. Something that might draw people’s attention to the class divides of Victorian society. He wanted to show that the needs of the poor must be addressed if society was ever to better itself. Queen Victoria’s diary tells us that she considered Dickens to have “ … the strongest sympathy with the poorer classes. He felt sure that a better feeling and greater union of the classes would take place in time.”

His thinking, of late, had grown increasingly politicized, too. In 1842 he toured America, a trip which galvanized his criticism of slavery (previously vocalized in The Pickwick Papers). He was deflated by the rise of right-wing power and regularly wrote anti-Tory satire. In his twenties, Dickens had worked as a parliamentary reporter, so it seemed the obvious choice to write a philosophically political pamphlet. He proposed the title “An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child,” but something soon changed his mind…

The second part of the Report of the Children’s Employment Commission was released in February 1843. The report detailed exploitative working conditions. These hit close to home for Dickens, who abandoned the pamphlet idea and vowed to create something much more commanding. Writing to a friend in March 1843, he said:

“Don’t be frightened when I tell you that since I wrote to you last, reasons have presented themselves for depriving the production of that pamphlet until the end of the year. I am not at liberty to explain them further, just now, but rest assured that when you know them, and see what I do, and which and how, you will certainly feel that a sledgehammer has come down with twenty times the force—twenty thousand times the force—I could expect by following out my first idea. Even so recently as when I wrote to you the other day I had not contemplated the means I shall now, please God, use.”

During the rest of the year, Dickens immersed himself in the report’s findings, meeting charities supporting the working poor, and visiting London’s Ragged Schools, which were set up with the aim to educate destitute young people.

Four weeks after one of these visits, in September 1843, Dickens began writing A Christmas Carol. All the while, he was “pegging away, tooth and nail” at Martin Chuzzlewit, which was still publishing monthly in episodic releases.

Dickens knew the timeliness of the story and its message. It needed to be out in time for Christmas. He would need to work quickly.

A Quintessential Ghost Story

Dickens completed the work in a mere six weeks, and 30,000 words. The story they told was conjured in Dickens’s imagination during long night walks around London. Turning in the words to his publishers, however, threw up a new roadblock in the tumultuous path of A Christmas Carol’s creation. His previous success, some might say, would be enough to earn the trust of his publishers. Alas, Chapman and Hall did not support the idea of a story for Christmas. 

This reluctance was worsened when Dickens stipulated that the book was to be a high-quality publication. His demands for the initial print run included a cinnamon cloth binding, with double rounds of endpapers, pages edged with gilt, and gold detail on the front. The publishers refused. So, Dickens self-funded the entire printing process, believing throughout that his “ghostly tale” would resonate with readers.

On December 19th, just one week before Christmas, A Christmas Carol hit the shelves. The first printing of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve.

In the concise manner of the book itself, Dickens prefaced the first edition with the following:

“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.”

A Christmas Carol was not simply a story to entertain; it was a call to action, a plea for kindness and social responsibility.

A ghost story with a purpose, Dickens’s haunting fable is a masterful exploration of morality, class consciousness, and the power of compassion.

On Christmas Eve, a miserly businessman named Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley — and then by the three Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Scrooge begins the novella as a cold, covetous man, whose misanthropy, and greed have estranged him from the joys of life. Scrooge is a cruel employer to his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and equally cold to his sweet-natured nephew, Fred, who sees Christmas as “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.” Scrooge is the symbol of Victorian greed, with no empathy for his fellow man, and certainly none for the poor.

Much like the Gothic novels Dickens admired, A Christmas Carol employs spectral figures to aid the narrative. Scrooge is supernaturally aided in viewing his own future, as though a theatergoer observing a show. Each ghost serves a distinct purpose, guiding Scrooge through an unsettling journey of self-reflection.

Bound to an afterlife of pain and imprisonment, Jacob Marley’s visit foretells the fate awaiting Scrooge, should he fail to change his ways. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge what might have been, through swirling vignettes from his youth. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a tour of London, flying between contrasting scenes of bounty and destitution, emphasizing the disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Oft-forgotten child-like figures, Ignorance and Want, cling to the ghost’s robes, grimly asserting the societal issues Dickens so keenly hoped to address. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is silent and foreboding, a Grim Reaper shrouded in black and pointing towards Scrooge’s inevitable mourner-less demise.

But at its heart, A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption. Scrooge wakes on Christmas Day as though born again. Through Scrooge’s newfound joie de vivre, Dickens offers a powerful reminder of the human capacity for change.

Most affecting of all is the beloved character of Tiny Tim. Through the Cratchit family, Dickens humanizes the unseen Victorian poor, while bringing to life the harsh realities of poverty. Bob Cratchit struggles to provide for his family, while his son, Tiny Tim, suffers from a life-threatening illness. Despite their hardships, The Cratchits exude warmth, togetherness, and joy. Tiny Tim, meanwhile, is the epitome of compassion, painted in stark contrast to Scrooge’s dark isolation. All the more potent, then, is Scrooge’s redemption. He becomes a “second father” to Tiny Tim, “who does not die.”

The transformation on Christmas Eve of one man, from miser to benefactor, demonstrates the possibility for benevolence in those who have long lost the idealizations of a “better world” in which Christmas was a time, as Fred believes, of “good.” By showing Scrooge the error of his ways, Dickens shows that society in general might be redeemed. As Scrooge so wisely comes to realize on Christmas morning: “‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ … ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.’”

A Tale for All Seasons 

A Christmas Carol endures as one of Dickens’s most celebrated works. From The Muppets to The Old Vic, it has been adapted countlessly, constantly, and in various guises since its 1843 debut. But its cultural impact has stretched beyond the realms of literature: Dickens’s depiction of Christmas in A Christmas Carol helped to shape modern celebrations and define the spirit of the season. In the Victorian Era, Christmas was undergoing a revival, with traditions such as tree decorating and carol singing gaining popularity. Dickens imbues the season with a moral significance. Christmas becomes a time for reflection, renewal, and goodwill. With this, “I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year,” says Scrooge.

Dickens himself associated his Christmas tale with this same goodwill. Written to demonstrate the human capacity for generosity, forgiveness, and benevolence, it has goodness at its core. Dickens’s first public reading in 1853 was to raise funds for a Birmingham Working Men’s Institute. Over the next few years, he gave more readings for charity, and whenever the production was free or discounted the reading was “always from A Christmas Carol.”

Like the Bible, A Christmas Carol has never been out of print. “And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one!”

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens (New York: Harper Collins, 1990).

Dickens, Charles, and Leech, John. A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Manuscript, 1843. The British Library.

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. (Germany: Chapman & Hall, 1843).

Henson, Brian. 1992. A Muppet Christmas Carol. Walt Disney Pictures.

Paroissien, David. A Companion to Charles Dickens. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture; 51. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2008).

Sibley, Brian. A Christmas Carol: The Unsung Story. (Oxford: Lion, 1994).

Weitzner, Harriet. Works of Charles Dickens (New York: Avenel Books, 1978)