A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I am always startled by how short this book is. A cultural icon ought to be the size of Micheangelo’s David or at least, War and Peace. But this story that has been on stage and screen from cartoons (Mr. Magoo, The Muppets) to a modern setting (with Vanessa Williams as a female Scrooge) is less than 130 pages long. It has been published in many forms since 1843, including volumes illustrated by artists such as Arthur Rackham.

Everyone knows the story; a crabby, miserly man has a vision of 3 ghosts one night which scares him so badly that he becomes a generous person who even saves cute little handicapped kids. It’s so familiar, that people think they’ve read it, even when they really haven’t. If they had, they would remember Dickens’s facility of language, his descriptive passages and eye for detail that makes the story even richer on the page than screen. Passages such as describing Scrooge’s home, “They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with the other houses, and have forgotten the way out again.” A librarian told me that was an example of Dickens appealing to children, since the book works on so many levels: fable, ghost story, Victorian morality tale, social commentary, just to name a few.

The first time I read A Christmas Carol years ago, I was surprised at how much humor was sprinkled through it. The funny asides, amusing incidents and droll irony provide welcome relief to such a dark story.

Dickens is a master at metaphor, comparing Scrooge to weather “The cold within him froze his old features….A frosty rime was on his head…” indicating that not only is Scrooge an icy creature, but also a force of nature. The details are marvelous and one finds new ones with each reading. For instance, Marley’s ghost shackled by a chain full of cash-boxes, ledgers and heavy purses. Noting that Topper prefers “the plump sister” in the game of blind man’s bluff. Or the activities of the spirits when “the air was filled with phantoms” that Scrooge sees out his window.

It’s quite remarkable to think of the impact that this simple story has had over so long a time. Evidently, its message of hope and redemption has a timeless appeal, which I suppose is a heartening sign for humanity. We have some redeeming qualities, after all. God bless us, everyone!

Various publishers 1843 aprox. 128 pp.