I don’t recall exactly how old I was the first time I read A Christmas Carol, but I was in grade school, and I knew enough to know that this Dickens fellow was an author adults read. Still, the volume was thin enough to be un-intimidating, and the illustrations were friendly, so I checked it out of the library (with the encouragement of the local librarian, I should say!). I remember being a bit taken aback when Dickens spent the better part of the first few pages on a tangent about door nails and why exactly we should think of them as “dead.” Taken aback, but not put off. I kept going and, to the best of my recollection, A Christmas Carol was the first “grown-up” book I ever completed.
It would be hard to imagine getting through life without some kind of exposure to A Christmas Carol. There have been at least twenty movie adaptations, countless theatrical productions, and more television and cartoon parodies than you can shake a figgy pudding at. While some productions have been more successful than others, no interpretation has ever been able to move me the way Dickens’ words did that first time and every time since, which is why I keep coming back to this book.
A Christmas Carol is hardly Dickens’ best novel (that honor goes to Great Expectations, in my humble opinion), but it is his most timeless. I got chills the first time I “heard” the Ghost of Christmas Present flinging Scrooge’s words back at him, “If he be like to die, he had better do it and reduce the surplus population,” and those words still thrill me. While the main themes are well known—avarice, poverty, redemption, compassion—there are some gems in this story that haven’t been captured by any adaptation I’ve ever seen. Consider this scene, when Scrooge gently suggests that the Ghost of Christmas Present would prevent families from celebrating together on Sundays by seeking to close establishments on the Seventh Day. “It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” says Scrooge. The Spirit responds with this poignant rebuttal:
“There are some upon this earth of yours. . .who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
Wow, I mean there’s Dickens calling out religious hypocrisy back in 1843 with words that are just as relevant today.
I daresay some will find this old Christmas standard quaint, and sure, it is. But it’s also beautiful, moving, and immutable. Don’t wait until next Christmas; read this story aloud with people you love today.