A Christmas Carol. Instantly our minds jump to images of ghosts burdened with chains and jolly Saint Nicholas-esque men in velvety robes. We may even think of Charles Dickens with his straight nose and tufty beard. Be it as it may, it is rare that on our own accord—without the help of Dickens—we picture the soot covered streets of a 19th century London that simply squalid, crowded with people, a great portion of whom are starving. No, we prefer to think of singing Muppets or plump turkeys or a rosy-cheeked Tiny Tim crying, “God bless us, every one!”
However, it was within this squalid London that Dickens's classic, A Christmas Carol, was born. Published in mid-December of 1843, A Christmas Carol was a cry to the “complacent Victorian middle classes about the need for compassion and charity, especially during the Christmas season” (Morgentaler 256). The timeliness of its publication was no coincidence and Dickens made his move precisely on cue. Due to a series of laws, called the Corn Laws, the economy of Great Britain faced a serious depression during which, millions of the working class were unable to buy even bread. For a while, government officials turned their heads and claimed that even though the people were too poor to buy bread, they at least “rejoiced in potatoes” (Gurney 99). The depression came to be termed the “Hungry Forties” and was among one of the worst of Great Britain's economic declines.
Although Charles Dickens was not the only author to direct the focus of his works towards the deplorable state of the people, he was—and continues to be—one of the most prominent. During this time, many authors chose to depict the national fear of famine simply because “[h]ungry people haunted the cultural imagination of 19th-century England”(Moore 490). Along with simple observation of the human conditions around him, Dickens was also studying “parliamentary bluebooks about the horrors of child labor before he began A Christmas Carol” (Langbauer 93). Dickens at first intended A Christmas Carol to be a pamphlet “as a response to the dire poverty and deprivation that Dickens saw allaround him”, but finally decided that the form of a fictional novel would serve his purposes better (Morgentaler 256). And it seemed as though the book had the effect upon the hearts of many that Dickens desired. William Makepeace Thackeray, a contemporary of Dickens, commented about the novel, “Who can listen to objections regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman, who reads it, a personal kindness” (Standiford 6). Now for nearly 170 years, A Christmas Carol has remained as one of Western literature's favorites.
Much like the societal circumstances which aided to its creation, the publication of Dickens's novel was a little less than ideal. Dickens was working with the publishers, Chapman and Hall, who were very much unenthusiastic by Dickens's idea for A Christmas Carol, since his previous work had done so poorly. However, Dickens was relentless and promised to produce the whole novel himself (including hiring an illustrator, designing, and advertising) if Chapman and Hall would print the book. Within six weeks, barely in time for the Christmas season, 6,000 copies of A Christmas Carol were ready to be sold, and Dickens was “fretting over the details of his project to the last minute” (Standiford 6). The novel proved to be a major success, and within four days of its publication on December 19th, 1843, every copy of the novel was sold, and Chapman and Hall had to call for second and third printings of the novel before the New Year.
Dickens’s classic appeared during a moment when much Christmas literature had already been written. His stood out because it “was unlike the other holiday books then the fashion . . . But the people were wearying of these lachrymose keepsakes, dedicated to love and friendship” (Hearn xlii). When Dickens brought his Christmas work onto the scene, the ghosts and the drama of it surprised and delighted readers. In addition to the realm of Christmas writing, The Christmas Carol was also a new step in the tradition of sympathetic works: it “both widened its scope and tightened its grasp on the reader; from a display of virtue meant to incite imitation . . . it has moved to a profound manipulation of the reader’s visual sense in what is, in effect, the mass marketing of an ideology about sympathy” (Jaffe 256). For both Christmas-themed writing and the didactic, Dickens wrote ahead of his competitors.
The form of Dickens’s work helped to lend itself to the memory and hearts of the readers as much as the subject matter did. His writing made it evident that it was “written to be read aloud. Both folksong and folktale—a ‘carol’ and a ‘ghost story of Christmas’—it was instantly traditional” (Davis 63). It could be passed around and passed on in homes by the hearth, or among friends on the street. This is evident in its initial reception and continued place of honor in literature. The endearing and redemptive potential of each character and the approachable atmosphere in the story brought people to its pages and urged them to invest in its words. There is proof of this in Dickens’s contemporary reviews: “‘These various scenes,’ said The Spectator . . . ‘are depicted with vivid force and humorous pleasantry, dashed with pathos, but not unalloyed by exaggeration. The more lively scenes are the truest, as well as the most agreeable” (Hearn lvii). His style and the theme of his writing helped it to enter people’s homes and hearts, never leaving their minds because of its effective form.
The spectacular impact of Dickens’s work was immediate and widespread. Most fascinating of all, that effect continues into modernity. It is well known that “this book is one of the few literary works that many people can identify by author and characters” (McGreevy 35). When called a Scrooge, nearly anyone knows that they have cause to be offended. It was not only the amount of readers aware of and involved in Dickens’s book, but also the amount that knew of him that was alarming and impressive. Many viewed him as the creator of Christmas, the Savior of Christmas, or Father Christmas himself. By his death, “the Carol had become the first gospel in the Dickensian scripture. It preached the good news of Christmas and Charles Dickens was its prophet” (Davis 58). It was seen as spiritual and undeniably important writing, and his immortality was insured. Although many would argue that “Charles Dicken’s place in literary history would have been secure even if he hadn’t written one of the greatest Christmas stories,” he would not have the annual fame that exists to this day because of his Christmas ghost story (Sammon 1).
