Background

When Charles Dickens first published A Christmas Carol in December 1843, it won instant popularity with the reading public. Critics note that in the novel Dickens virtually invented the holiday season as many celebrate it today. In earlier times the observance of the twelve days of Christmas was limited to wealthy courts. The Puritan takeover during the seventeenth century involved the suppression of all Christmas festivities, and they did not return with the restoration of the monarchy. The novel presents Christmas as a time for charity, caroling, good will, and celebration within nuclear families. The story’s immediate popularity demonstrates that this vision had tremendous appeal for people early during the Victorian Era.

A Christmas Carol came relatively early in Dickens’ career, only ten years after his first published story. The Pickwick Papers was published in serial form in 1836–1837, followed quickly by Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. Meanwhile, Dickens had married and begun what would become a large family. The small boy forced to black shoes while his family was in debtors’ prison was decades in the past, and Great Expectations was decades in the future.

A Christmas Carol, regardless of the title, is not a religious text as much as a humanistic one. Church bells do ring, but Dickens emphasizes not religion as much as humanitarianism. As in many of his other works, we see concern with ethics, the right (and wrong) way to live, as well as an awareness of the plight of the poor. Naomi Wood, Kansas State University professor of English, labels it “a compelling story about the Christmas holiday not as a religious observance, but as an aspect of the social contract: the time when those who 'have' experience joy in sharing with those who 'have not.’”

Dickens titled his novel A Christmas Carol rather than A Christmas Story. Although the work is clearly not a song, he carried through the metaphor by using divisions he called staves instead of “chapters.” In music and poetry, a stave can be a musical score or a stanza. The novel also capitalizes on Victorian interest in ghost stories and the custom of telling them during the Christmas season.

This is an excellent choice to introduce young adolescents to Victorian writing and to Charles Dickens in particular, especially just before or during the holiday season when retail pressures can elicit a “Bah, humbug!” from just about anyone. The novel is short enough to be identified sometimes as a novella; it tells a good story; and it stresses themes that transcend all kinds of differences.

“Using Textual Clues to Understand ‘A Christmas Carol.’” NEH-Edsitement, 2019, edsitement.neh.gov/curricula/using-textual-clues-understand-christmas-carol. Accessed 11 Dec. 2019.

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