A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
A Brief Introduction and Study Guide
In my own home the Christmas season has not started in earnest until we have watched A Christmas Carol. I must make two confessions, however. First, I must confess that the version of A Christmas Carol we love best involves Gonzo as Charles Dickens and Rizzo the Rat as his sidekick. Secondly, I confess that we typically start celebrating the Christmas season about a week before Thanksgiving. I’ll add a third confession…I’m not sorry for either of these things!
Nonetheless, I am very ready to admit that the book A Christmas Carol is a true masterpiece and I tell you that if you’ve never read it you are truly missing out on something special. I don’t care how many different productions of the story you’ve watched, and goodness only knows how many there are, you need to read the real thing!
There is a reason this story has become part and parcel with Christmas. There is a reason that it has been performed countless times in countless theaters over the years. There is a reason it has been redone as a movie, over and over again. There is a reason it has been spoofed so many times! The story simply resonates in the hearts of those who know it. It convicts us, it rebukes us, it creates empathy in our hearts, it warms us, it inspires us, and it sends us out to love our neighbor as ourself.
First published in 1843, Charles Dickens seemed to know from the outset that he had written something special. In his preface to the work he wrote:
“I have endeavored this Ghostly little book, to rise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.”
And haunt our homes it has. Year after year Marley’s Ghost returns, not just to Scrooge but also to us. We are reminded, warned, and encouraged that life is short, what we do matters, we are all on this road to the end together, and we ought to show one another Christian charity and compassion along the way.
Dickens was a master of words. Some movies and plays have done better than others at preserving Dickens’ own words in their scripts but what is lost when taking a Dickens book and making it a visual production is his use of description. He was a true wordsmith and no visual illustration can paint the picture for you that Dickens can implant into your own mind’s eye with his words.
Consider just this one piece as Marley is described:
“To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.”
Dickens wrote with a purpose. He was calling those in his own day to not turn a blind eye to the poor the rest of the year. It was common fashion in the Victorian era for the rich to “do a little something” for the poor at Christmastime. But Dickens, through the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, sought to call his fellow man to have real empathy with the poor. He wanted them to feel what it was to be poor, to know that it is a condition for many all the year round. Those more fortunate would do well to be reminded that we are all “fellow-passengers to the grave” and the poor are not “another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” No, we are all the same. The Christmas Carol helps us all really feel this truth and that is the unique power of story.
As we read of Scrooge’s dealings with the three spirits of Christmas, we find that we are on the same journey as he. We are reminded of that which he is reminded. We are told that, just like Scrooge, it is in our power to do good and show kindness and that we are better and happier for doing so. We are also reminded that to be “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner” is to cut ourselves off from love and humanity and that if we persist we will find our desires granted to us forever.
As another great thinker has told us:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” (C. S. Lewis; The Great Divorce)
The good news of Jesus Christ is no mere “social gospel” where in Christians are obligated to create and give to “programs” for the poor. It is indeed the souls of men which Christ came to save, but let us never forget that those souls are attached to bodies. As it is written, “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Those bodies need food, clothing, shelter, and human kindness. Never forget James’ example of living faith involved providing people with the needs of the body, never forget that Jesus tells his sheep that they fed him when he was hungry; clothed him when he was naked. Caring for physical needs is not the gospel, but gospel oriented people care about the physical needs of others and don’t turn a blind eye to people whom it is in their power to help.
It’s always in the tensions, it seems. One professing Christian will insist the good news is news of where to feed the body while ignoring the soul, another professing Christian will insist the good news is that of how to feed the soul while ignoring the body. The gospel transforms whole persons and the message comes to whole persons who need to be well, body and soul. If we would love our neighbor as ourself we would see to it, as best as we are able, that neither body nor soul lacks in good news.
We cannot solve the world problems, it’s true. But we also ought not to walk by on the other side of the road when we someone lying in the ditch. We can say with Scrooge, “It’s not by business” or we can agree with Marley, “‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.’”
I think reading this book each Christmas remains good medicine for the world. Especially so for Christians. I think actually reading this book (more than watching the movies or plays or spoofs) has done us good, and will do us good; and I say, “God bless it!”
Below are the links (as they become available) for the study guide on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The page numbers correspond to THIS EDITION. The story is called a “carol” and therefore it has not chapters but “staves” as you read the song Dickens wants us to sing in our hearts all the year long. Pick up a copy and let the haunting begin!
Stave 1
Stave 2
Stave 3
Stave 4
Stave 5
I just printed the study guide and will be working through it this month.