I started watching A Christmas Carol with my mom when I was a little girl, and we still watch it every Christmas, although maybe not together. We watch the 1951 version with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. All other versions are wrong/inferior, except for the Muppet version, which is the second best version and also acceptable, because Muppets. That the Alastair Sim version of the film is the best version is one of the pettiest hills I’m willing to die on.
It wasn’t until I was older that I actually read the story. I try to read it most Christmases now, but don’t always succeed. I did in 2018, though. I’m not going to bother recapping it, as it’s a very popular/well known story, but I recommend everyone read it even if they don’t celebrate Christmas, rather than just watch the film. Or listen to the audiobook, that’s fun too., I’ve found that reading Dickens is a joy as long as you aren’t in school. Yes, he is quite wordy, but that is part of what makes it fun. His language is magic all its own.
As with many books gone Hollywood, reading the book is different than the film. I quite enjoyed the book, and it gave me one of my favorite opening lines ever:
Marley was dead: to begin with.
Come on! That’s great!
There are some other really famous lines too, which I love quoting at people who don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about (because I, too, can be a smug asshole). “Are there no prisons!? Are there no workhouses!?”
I also like the end, that Scrooge learns to “keep Christmas in his heart.” The entire thing is beautifully written in a way only Dickens ever seemed to master.
There’s also a lot of history surrounding A Christmas Carol (as there is around a lot of Dickens’ stories) and I find it particularly enjoyable for some reason, possibly because I connect it with the happy Christmases and nostalgia of when I was young, possibly because it’s just very interesting, and possibly just because it’s good. Is there a better story that embodies the spirit of Christmas?
The Victorians more or less developed the celebrations and traditions of modern Christmas. From caroling to Christmas trees, if you’re familiar with it, they developed it or popularized it. Maybe that’s a little broad, but it is generally accurate. The story is considered a zeitgeist of the Victorian age which I heard somewhere but also read on Wikipedia later so maybe that was stolen?
The legacy of the story is one that still touches us today. In the west, we frequently “do” Dickens’ vision of Christmas – we visit friends and family, give to the poor, sing songs, have dances, play games, have a special meal and take a day off from work. We’re more optimistic and more generous than we usually are. We “keep Christmas” the way Dickens’ Scrooge kept Christmas.
I’m sure not everyone loves the story as much as I do, and the actual realities of life at the time clash with the optimism of the story. But I firmly think this is a story that should be read by everyone for the language, lasting legacy, and cultural currency.
Tag Archives: books: a christmas carol
A Christmas Carol
Mr. Dickens and His Carol
One of my favorite stories ever is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and Dickens gets a lot of credit for “inventing” Christmas with that story. His tale of a crotchety, miserly old man visited by three ghosts of Christmas whose teachings grow his heart three sizes warms my heart every Christmas. I make it a point to read/listen to A Christmas Carol each year, and each year I watch the movie with my mom. The best version is the black and white version with Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge.
Samantha Silva’s Mr. Dickens and His Carol is one of a series of tellings about Dickens writing his famous Christmas story that have arrived on the scene in the last few years.
The premise: Dickens, his latest novel (Martin Chuzzlewit) a flop with critics turning against him, is blackmailed by his publishers into writing a Christmas story to save them all from financial ruin. This includes Dickens himself, whose growing family and social circle is becoming more and more unruly, with his wife planning a large Christmas party for just about everyone they know. With a nasty bout of writers’ block and an approaching deadline coming up fast, Dickens meets a muse named Eleanor Lovejoy, who sends Dickens on a Scrooge-like journey of his own, testing his beliefs in generosity, friendship, and love.
The story he writes changes the way the world looks at Christmas.
A little history: this era in England – the Victorian era – was the time when celebrating the Christmas season was becoming a big deal. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert popularized the Christmas tree in Britain, and carols had experienced a revival. Other Christmas stories had proven successful, so it isn’t unbelievable that Dickens’s publishers would coerce him into writing one.
I loved this book. I thought it would be sappy and over sentimental but it wasn’t. I liked that Dickens was a grumpy old man and that he bah humbug’d it a couple of times. I liked that his relationship with Eleanor was more that of friendship than dirty old man, which was what I was expecting. I don’t know why I was expecting this, but I was wrong and was happy about it.
A Christmas Carol was supposedly written in a frenzied six weeks, with much of the work composed in Dickens’s head as he took long nighttime walks around London (some accounts say as many as 15-20 miles) and I felt Silva did a particularly good job conveying this time crunch in the book. Writing the whole thing in six weeks required a lot of frenzied periods of activity, and I felt that here.
Dickens put an emphasis on a humanitarian side of the season, and that was felt here too, showing Dickens influences due to his relationships with his family, friends, and fans.
And of course, there was a happy ending.
Mr. Dickens and His Carol is a must read for anyone who loves Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and the spirit of the holiday.
words in scarlet ink 