A Christmas Carol

Cover illustration is a painting by Isabel Florrie Saul held at the Bridgeman Art Library.

     "In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered: flushed, but smiling proudly: with the pudding, like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing with half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
     Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
     At last the dinner was all done, the cloth cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up."

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Charles Dickens

Dickens (1812 - 1870) is considered the greatest novelist of the Victorian era and second only to Shakespeare in producing major works which are considered English classics to this day. The sheer volume of his work included not only great novels such as Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations but travelogues, histories, essays, poetry and plays, as well as periodical editing, public readings and speaking and letter writing.

Story

A mean-spirited and greedy Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas. On Christmas Eve he is unkind to his peers, employees and his one family member, but his dead partner, Jacob Marley, warns him of the eternal outcome of such a miserly heart. Scrooge takes to heart this warning when he is visited that night by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

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Wonder

In choosing this story, I wondered if a 177 year-old story would stand the test of 2020. But re-reading it set my wonder at ease: the themes of family unity, generosity and forgiveness set in contrast to greed and self-absorption are as current as our current pandemic. While some may find Dickens a bit sentimental, A Christmas Carol is filled with moments of brilliant satire as well as clear-eyed narrative describing the more blatant hypocrisy of the Victorian British class system.

Young adult, 85 pages. A mean-spirited and greedy Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas as much as he hates people, but his heart is changed by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.