How Did Dickens' A Christmas Carol Help Shape the Christmas We Recognise Today?

How Did Dickens' A Christmas Carol Help Shape the Christmas We Recognise Today?

by Georgia Alzapiedi 

Georgia Alzapiedi graduated with a BA in English Literature from University of Westminster in 2014, and takes interest in the writings and historical contexts of Shakespeare and Victorian authors. However, Georgia’s particular interest is in the Modernist movement and the First World War, and the impact of this period in history. She currently works as an English teacher in a secondary school, teaching GCSE and A-Level English Language and English Literature. In her spare time, Georgia runs a travel blog, where she regularly writes about key historical and cultural attractions worth visiting in the UK. 

Before the reign of Queen Victoria, Christmas was not as festive as we recognise it to be today. Naturally, the English people observed Christmas - Christ’s Mass - by partaking in mass, but there was little sense of celebration. The midwinter festival - a pagan tradition of decorating homes with ivy, mistletoe, and holly - was still practised. However, Christian beliefs and superstitions conflicted with the superstitious and ‘magical’ aspects of the festival.

Introduce Charles Dickens. In the very same year that O Come All Ye Faithful entered society as a Christmas carol, and the first Christmas card was printed, his arguably most famous novella, A Christmas Carol, was published in 1843. The story is now a familiar one: Ebeneezer Scrooge, a ‘covetous old sinner’ is visited by the ghost of his old partner Jacob Marley, and three Christmas Spirits, who help him realise his sins, become a better Christian, and achieve salvation through embracing Christmas. At first, the story seems simplistic, but this is more than a novella about salvation – it’s almost a handbook to what Dickens imagines Christmas to be.

In the opening of the book, it is established that Scrooge is a poor example of a Christian. He denies the fundamental ideologies of Christmas – refusing charity, refusing to visit family, and almost denying his clerk Bob Cratchit a holiday. It is in this early Victorian period where Christmas becomes a holiday – or ‘holy day’. The rise of the middle-class and their wealth through factory ownership, enabled families to take time off, often a two-day period. As a result, many of the working class were also permitted holiday, a welcome gift to those who labour long hours with little pay and protection. Scrooge’s reluctance to stop working over the festive period is presented as one of his more problematic sins – greed and a refusal to worship - which causes him to be at risk of eternal damnation. Dickens cleverly uses this to influence his middle-class readership. The term ‘a Scrooge’ is now synonymous with one who denies festivity in common English. Dickens wants his readership to distance themselves from Scrooge as much as possible.

Dickens’ ideas about Christmas are implicit in the opening two chapters, but by Stave Three, we see clearly what traditions he wants society to embrace. Scrooge is led through Christmas Day by The Ghost of Christmas Present; a personification of what Dickens imagines Christmas to be, and the basis of our imagery of Father Christmas. Evidently, Father Christmas appears earlier: Sinterklaas is the early mythical character who gives gifts to children, and a representation of Father Christmas appears in ‘A Visit From St Nicholas’ in 1823, but it is the imagery of Dickens’ character that seems to solidify him in the canon. In the novella, the ghost is “clothed in one simple deep green robe… bordered with white fur” – of course modern presentations of Father Christmas are dressed in red, but green and gold are still traditional colours representing Christmas time. Their face is ‘genial’, their eyes are ‘sparkling’, ‘its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air’ are all recognisable in the ho, ho, ho of the modern Santa Claus. Perhaps most interestingly, Dickens gives the ghost the line “You have never seen the like of me before!” This was true for all first readers of the novella: the personification of Christmas in such a manner had not been seen before.

Food and feasting are incredibly important aspects of celebration throughout history, but a Christmas feast is arguably unlike other feasts, since the food choices are quite specific. The Ghost of Christmas Present also is pictured on a throne made from an abundance of food. Dickens lists the foods of Christmas throughout this stave: “great joints of meat… long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings… red-hot chestnuts'”; many of which we place in our shopping trolley today. In the same Stave, readers are introduced to the Christmas dinners of both Fred and Bob Cratchit, where both spend the day in the company of family and friends; eating and drinking as much as their wealth allows. In the Victorian era, families would choose beef, or goose, depending on where in England they lived, as they were relatively affordable meats and could be acquired for the centrepiece of a meal. Turkey, on the other hand, originally imported into England from North America was significantly more expensive. So why is it turkey that we choose to consume? In the final stave, Scrooge flings his bedroom windows open, shouts to a young boy in the street, and gifts -- “not the little prize turkey: the big one” to the Cratchit family – a gift that would likely sustain them for more than a week. It is not until the mid-twentieth century that turkey becomes a Christmas staple, but it certainly rises in popularity from this early Victorian period.

By the end of the novella Dickens’ attitudes towards gifting are clear. Scrooge gifts Bob and his family the turkey, and offers a significant amount of money to the two charity collectors he rejected early in the novel. By this point, Scrooge’s character has embraced Christmas, and Christianity, in his heart and his soul is saved. As it is, we connect this salvation with the act of gift giving, and the first edition of A Christmas Carol was intended to be given as a gift: it was printed with a red cloth binding, gilded pages and yellow endpapers, clearly a luxury product, and all 6000 copies sold out. Dickens himself was generous in publication – he paid all costs to publish the first edition, on the basis that he could keep all profits for himself. Due to the luxury of the binding he selected, Dickens’ profits were limited. Profit has driven this particular tradition of Christmas throughout the twentieth-and-twenty-first-centuries, where Christmas has become arguably more of a commercial holiday.

However, now we seem to be shifting. People are reconsidering how they give to one another, and how they source foods, with environmental impact becoming a rising concern in the 2020s. Perhaps the way Christmas in England is celebrated will move away from the traditions influenced by Dickens and A Christmas Carol, but the messages of the novella - give to charity, rest, spend time with loved ones, be a ‘good’ person - surely will continue for centuries to come.

Bibliography

Biblio, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Biblio [website], 2021, https://biblio.co.uk/a-christmas-carol-by-dickens-charles/work/50, Accessed 2/12/2021

Dickens C, A Christmas Carol, J. B. Lippincott Company Philadelphia and New York, Great Britain, 1915, Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24022/pg24022-images.html, Accessed 2/12/2021

Johnson, B, A Victorian Christmas, Historic UK [website], https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/A-Victorian-Christmas/, Accessed 1/12/21