Introduction

As G.K. Chesterton noted long ago, with A Christmas Carol Dickens succeeded in transforming Christmas from a sacred festival into a family feast. In so doing, he brought the holiday inside the home and thus made it accessible to ordinary people, who were now able to participate directly in the celebration rather than merely witnessing its performance in church.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in the 1840s. These were years of famine in Ireland as well as of severe economic depression worldwide. Dickens knew and understood the effects of poverty, and, by having Scrooge notice homeless mothers huddled in doorways at the end of the first Stave, he was writing from his own observation and experience. So today, A Christmas Carol along with other works by Dickens continues to direct attention to the problems of homelessness and economic injustice on our very doorsteps. In focusing on such questions, Dickens is a writer for all historical periods, including our own.

It is useful to recall that Dickens had written an earlier version of A Christmas Carol several years before taking up the story of Scrooge in October 1843. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-37), contains an interpolated tale, "The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton," that anticipates A Christmas Carol in several interesting respects. Told at a Christmas party, the story recounts how Gabriel Grubb, a drunken, cruel, misanthropist, is visited one Christmas Eve by goblins, who torment him physically and show him scenes of the happy domestic life from which he has deliberately excluded himself. The lessons they teach him result in his redemption. He reforms his ways and eventually leads a long and happy life.

The major change that Dickens made in 1843 when he revised his earlier tale was to transform its central character from a member of the working class-a sexton-into a wealthy businessman, thereby introducing a different and considerably more "radical" social message into the story. Nevertheless, the basic situation in the two stories is quite similar. Both Gabriel Grubb and Scrooge are spoilsports. That is, each refuses to join and participate in the communal festival or sacred "sport" of Christmas. In both stories the spoilsport receives supernatural visitors who instruct him in the human values appropriate to the Christmas season, and in both stories the spoilsport undergoes a conversion that reunites him with the spirit of community and fellowship. In both stories, moreover, a child or group of children plays an important role in the redemptive process.

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens unites important features of the two Christmas stories he wrote for the December number of Pickwick Papers, joining the family feast of Dingley Dell with its games, intergenerational bonding, and domestic rituals together with the story of a supernatual visitiation leading to conversion.

The various Christmas Carol adaptations listed below reflect only a fraction of the many ways in which Dickens's original tale has been transposed to other media. In a sense, the story itself is already a multi-media production, especially the scenes where Scrooge is made to witness a series of visionary tableaux in which he can not participate. It is almost as if Dickens were writing a story to be told by media not yet available in the Victorian age. Yet no sooner was a new technology invented in the intervening 150 years than A Christmas Carol was quickly adapted to it.

Reactions to A Christmas Carol have varied tremendously over the years, with each generation finding in it a message-spiritual, psychological, or political-applicable to the needs of different audiences. Clearly the Carol is an ideological work, both in and for our own time. The enormous success of its multiple adaptations testifies to its enduring value as a marketable commodity. Ostensibly its message is one that decries the commercialism of a debased Christmas celebration. Yet ironically, the story itself continues to be bought and sold, packaged and repackaged to meet an apparently inexhaustible demand. However, in the end, it may not matter that A Christmas Carol has been commercialized, since its story of the strength of community and the power of love is not lost in the buying and selling.

Curiously enough, Dickens himself made little money from A Christmas Carol, although he had high hopes for its commercial success. In its first edition, the Carol was a beautiful little book, well made and lavish with illustrations. Our little book, not so lavish nor so beautiful, nevertheless attempts to reproduce some of the spirit that animated the original. May it bring you pleasure and good cheer!
 

The Illustrations

"Fezziwig 'cuts'"
(The Frontispiece)

A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig 'cut'-cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

Marley's Ghost
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
 

Marley's Spirit Companions
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
 

The Extinguishing of the Spirit of Christmas Past
"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head. The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.

It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.

Ignorance and Want
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it"! cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!" "Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge? "Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.

The Revelation on the Tombstone
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?" Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you will show me!"
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Smoking Bishop
"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"