Back Story: A Christmas Carol

A perennial holiday favorite, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has been adapted for screen, stage and print so many times it’s impossible to count.

There’s Dolly Parton’s “A Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol” set—you guessed it—in East Tennessee. Remember Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (released in 2009)? Yep, even that movie owes more than a little thanks to Dickens’ instant classic, released in December 1843.

In addition, each year a number of Hallmark movies reimagine the tale, ranging from funny to serious and everything in between. Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, even offer up hour-long Broadway-style musicals based on the novel each year during each park’s celebration of the Christmas season.

But what’s the real story behind Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? While the novel and the centerpiece story of Ebenezer Scrooge transforming from a bitter miser to a generous, gentle man captures our hearts, why did Dickens write it in the first place?

The answer to those questions—like the answers to most questions—are a little complicated.

Dickens’ Childhood

When Dickens was 12 years old, his father, who worked as a clerk in a navy pay office, was sent to debtors’ prison. The entire family moved into the debtors’ prison with him—with the exception of Charles. To help pay the family’s debts, Dickens left school and went to work in a factory, working 12 hours a day, often repeating the same task over and over for hours. Dickens’ experience deeply affected him, with some scholars positing he never fully recovered from the ordeal (Paul Millward).

Society’s Views on Poverty

A government report had just been published in England detailing the state of child labor in the country. A journalist friend of Dickens had compiled interview upon interview with child laborers, stories that apparently left Dickens “stricken” (John Broich). At the time, the prevalent view was that people were poor because they were lazy or immoral. To help them, then, was to enable that laziness or immorality and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Workhouses, which split up families so that each member could work for meager wages and even less food, were thought to be the best means of reformation.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution had changed the way people worked. Rather than practicing cottage industry, where people produced goods on a small scale in their homes, cities became manufacturing centers. Many people moved from the countryside for the steady work of the factory, but once there, employers regarded their workers as commodities, resources valued for how much they could produce in an hour rather than their humanity.

With all of this in mind, Dickens at first thought he would write a pamphlet arguing for better treatment of child laborers and laborers in general. But understanding the power of story (something we understand well here at The Bookery), Dickens began drafting a story, seeking to capture peoples’ hearts. By the fall of 1843, A Christmas Carol was complete, finished in less than two months’ time.

What Did Dickens Accomplish?

The impact of A Christmas Carol is difficult to trace but the novel did help to push some ideas forward.

• A new way to consider the poor: Dickens wanted to stop the cycle of poverty and knew that it would take changing society’s view of the poor to do so. While it’s impossible to trace any change in attitude to the novel, it is important that Dickens shed some light on the uglier side of society. A Christmas Carol was an instant bestseller, so Dickens’ desire to appeal to the heart seemed to have worked.

• Reshaping Christmas celebrations: Paul Millward writes that Dickens’ depiction of Christmas as a time of “joy, compassion and companionship” helped create the blueprint for how we celebrate today. “Many Christmas traditions, which feel as if they have been in existence for millennia, were actually not widely practiced until Dickens published his perennial tale of Scrooge’s spiritual journey from miserable old miser to the very soul of Christmas joy and generosity,” Millward wrote in his 2017 article. “The book depicts certain sentimental aspects of Christmas which are now so firmly ingrained in the season that Christmas would be unthinkable without them. Christmas is a family-oriented festival based around plenteous food, drink and jollity, a season of good cheer, of dancing and frivolity, a time of warm-hearted goodness when we extend a hand to those less fortunate than ourselves.”

Sources I consulted for this article include:

• “The Real Reason Charles Dickens Wrote A Christmas Carol” by John Broich

• “The Real Story Behind Dickens’ A Christmas Carol” by Paul Millward

• “A Christmas Carol Is Published” by History.com Editors

• “Did Charles Dickens really save poor children and clean up the slums?” by Matthew Davis

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