Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”

On the eve of Catholic Christmas, we suggest reading (or re-reading) the most Christmas book in the history of English literature. It was “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens that made this holiday the way we know it now – a family reunion at the festive table, maximum light and warmth in the darkest and coldest time of the year.

Book history
The childhood of Charles Dickens was not always rosy: his parents loved him and other children, but his father kept getting into debt, and the family lived from hand to mouth. One day, realizing that there was no other way to survive the winter, he sent 12-year-old Charles to a waxing factory, where working conditions were no different from the workhouse – the fear of all the English poor in the 19th century.

This decision was hardly easy for Dickens’s parents, but one way or another, it hurt the boy much more.
Having achieved recognition in literature, in fact, becoming the most commercially successful British writer of his time, Charles Dickens never forgot about either hunger or the factory. Wealth was for him not only a measure of success, but reliable protection. Therefore, when on Christmas Eve in 1843 it turned out that the well-being of his family was under threat, Dickens urgently needed to write a new book.

“A Christmas Carol in Prose” he created in a few weeks, but the publishers refused to publish the book. Then Dickens decided to take a chance: he published it for his own money and set an unreasonably low price so that everyone could buy it. The first edition was swept away from the shelves in the very first days, another one was needed before the end of the year, and in 1844 another 11 editions of the Christmas Song were needed.How Dickens “invented” Christmas

Now it’s hard to believe, but some 200 years ago, Christmas for the British was not such an important holiday as we know it now. The birth of Christ was celebrated by going to church, the priests prepared sermons appropriate for the occasion, and that was it. It is thanks to Dickens’ novel “A Christmas Carol in Prose” that Christmas began to acquire its present almost pagan scope with traditional dishes and Christmas tree decorations, with the exchange of gifts and merry games.
There is a lot of personal in this book: it is not as biographical as “David Copperfield”, but very simply and frankly conveys the worldview and fears of the author.

“A Christmas Carol in Prose” plot
Ebenezer Scrooge is the tightest old curmudgeon in all of London. The story begins at Christmas, and immediately shows all the worst qualities of Scrooge: he knows that his employee’s family lives very poorly, but does not give him even the most modest bonus for the holiday, and keeps him late in the office, instead of letting him go home to family.

Scrooge is sure that he is right, if he were not a miser, he would never have earned as much money as he has now. In his long life, the thought never occurred to him that money is useless if it is not spent and there is no one to pass it on to. Scrooge is lonely – no family, no friends – he used to think that this is for the best, because there is no one to ask him for a loan or encroach on his fortune.

On the night before Christmas, Scrooge’s life will change thanks to an unusual dream and a belated insight. In a dream, three spirits of Christmas appear to him in turn.

• The spirit of past years shows him in his youth, before Scrooge became so stingy with money and emotions;
• The spirit of this Christmas takes Scrooge around London outside his windows, shows the family of his clerk, with whom the old man is so rude – there are many children and the table is so meager that you want to cry, but at the same time the family is very friendly and loving;
• The spirit of the future brings Scrooge to his funeral, where no one but the gravediggers will come.

These dreams melted Scrooge’s stone heart, and he decided to change his life before it was too late.