A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, 1843) is a story that I suspect everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows but, if you don’t, here is a recap of the five staves:
Stave One (19 pp.) sees a miserly old businessman called Scrooge visited in his ill-heated office by his nephew, who is full of Xmas spirit; Scrooge Bah Humbugs him:
‘If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’
After the nephew leaves Scrooge then repels two chuggers who visit wanting donations for the poor and destitute (Scrooge asks, “Are there no workhouses [. . .] prisons?” etc.). Finally, Scrooge reluctantly gives his clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off before going home.
Later that night Scrooge is disturbed by (his ex-business partner) Marley’s Ghost and his clanking chains. Marley tells Scrooge that he is condemned to wander the Earth because he didn’t involve himself with the affairs of men when he was alive, but that Scrooge can avoid the same fate if he pays attention to the three ghosts that will visit him.
There are some nice turns of phrase in this stave (when Scrooge thinks Marley is a figment of his indigestion, he says, ‘There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’), but there is also some padding/rambling too.
Stave Two (18 pp.) sees the arrival of The Ghost of Christmas Past (which has a jet of light shooting out of its head), and Scrooge is taken back to his past. We see Scrooge at school; his sister arriving to take him home; as an apprentice at Fezziwig’s, who is a generous and genial boss; and breaking up with his fiancé. Last of all we see him watching the latter and her future family—and at one point her husband returns home with the news that he saw Scrooge working in his office when Marley was on the point of death.
Eventually Scrooge begs the ghost to stop the visions and, when he pulls the ghost’s cap onto its head, the light is extinguished and he slips back to sleep. Even though the ghosts’ visits have just begun, it is already clear that Scrooge has already begun to crack and will duly reform his character.
This section is probably the baggiest of them all, and I didn’t entirely understand some of the references or scenes.1
Stave Three (23 pp.) sees the Ghost of Christmas Present arrive and take Scrooge through the bustling town to Bob Cratchit’s house (the level of detail provided on their journey is very suggestive of the time and place). There, Scrooge watches Bob’s family have their Xmas dinner, and sees Tiny Tim, Cratchit’s crippled son, for the first time. Later, Scrooge learns of the boy’s fate:
‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’ Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
Directly after this exchange, Cratchit proposes a toast to Scrooge—against the protestations of his wife—and a temporary pall is cast over the feast.
The ghost takes Scrooge away to see the Christmases taking place in a miners’ hut and a lighthouse before they arrive at Scrooge’s nephew’s family dinner. Yet again Scrooge hears himself talked about—this time in pitying terms—but once more there is a toast to his health.
At the end of Scrooge’s foray the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals two children hiding under his shroud:
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit! are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘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 abide 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 work-houses?’
The moral of the story, I suppose: give generously to relieve want.
Stave 4 (15 pp.) is the shortest—and perhaps eeriest—of the three ghostly visits, and begins with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showing Scrooge a group of businessmen talking about someone who has died (during this encounter and the subsequent ones (spoiler), the person referred to is obviously Scrooge, but he does not realise this until the final revelation). After this the ghost and Scrooge go to the home of a fence who is appraising goods stolen from the house of a dead man (which include the fine shirt that a woman has taken off his corpse). Next, they see the body, whose face is covered, before going on to Bob Cratchit’s house: there, we learn that Tiny Tim has also died.
Finally, the ghost takes him to a graveyard, where Scrooge sees an untended grave and realises it is his own—Scrooge breaks down and asks the ghost whether it is possible for him to change the future.
Stave 5 (7 pp.) sees Scrooge wake in his own bed on Christmas morning—and he quickly sets about changing his ways. First he sends a big turkey to Bob Cratchit’s, then he goes to his nephew’s house for Christmas lunch. The next day, after teasing Cratchit about his late arrival, he gives Bob a pay rise and promises to help his family (Scrooge promises to discuss these matters in the afternoon, “over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop”2).
In conclusion, I enjoyed this story a lot more than I thought I would, especially given (a) my overfamiliarity with the plot and (b) a distant memory of it being written in old-fashioned prose. Generally, though, the writing didn’t feel like that at all, and the story moves along reasonably slickly with some stand-out scenes (the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner, the scene in the fence’s house, etc.). If I do have a reservation it is about the moral of the story which, superficially, seems to be an exhortation to rich people to give to the poor—but only so they will be thought well of by others and not forgotten (I presume that nowadays Scrooge would do some politically correct messaging on Twitter instead). For me, however, the more admirable behaviour in the story is that of Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew: the kind things they have to say about their antithesis at their Christmas dinners is a properly non-transactional form of altruism.
**** (Very Good). 30,200 words. Story link.
1. One part of the story which lost me was a passage which refers to Ali Baba and various other childhood characters. Footnote 31 (in the Oxford edition) explains these various references, including the information that “Valentine . . . and his wild brother, Orson: [are] the heroes of a fifteenth century French romance, The History of two Valyannte Brethren, Valentyne and Orson, which became a popular English children’s story.”
2. Footnote 90 explains that “smoking bishop [is] a mulled wine drink composed of wine, oranges, sugar, and spices, so called for its rich purple colour.”
There is a recipe here, and I was, in a moment of misplaced seasonal enthusiasm (Bah Humbug), going to try it—but it seems a bit of a faff.