As the year comes to an end, many will enjoy a period of relaxation between Christmas and New Year’s Day. You may want to thank Victorian novelist Charles Dickens for the time off.
Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol may be remembered today for its various film adaptions and the popular phrase “Bah! Humbug!”; however, the story’s influence is more far-reaching than most know.
Written during Britain’s Industrial Revolution, which was radically upending traditional ways of life, Dickens’ best-selling story was his persuasive plea for why we should keep the Christmas spirit alive.
“One of the things that Dickens was trying to do was to hang onto traditions. We don’t do Saint George’s Day or Saint Michael’s Day anymore, but he thought, ‘For God’s sakes, let’s hold on to Christmas,’” says Tok Thompson, professor (teaching) of anthropology. If you’re off work or school today for winter break, Dickens would consider his story a rousing success.
Charles Dickens classic stems from tumultuous times
When A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, Britain’s Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
Technological advancements had replaced handmade production of goods with factories. Many rural families moved into cities to find work. Once there, they often endured long workdays, dangerous labor conditions, and extreme poverty conditions.
“Farmer peasants were poor, but they had a lot of days off, food on the table and good community,” says Thompson. “Cities were not like that. You had debtor prisons, no worker protections, no child labor laws. It was vicious.”
Dickens experienced this firsthand. After his father was sent to a debtor prison, 12-year-old Dickens worked in a shoe-blacking factory. As an adult, visits to a “ragged school,” which housed street children, and a tour of Cornish mines that employed child laborers solidified his desire to alter social attitudes around poverty.
Dickens decided to write a persuasive Christmas tale, one that emphasized charity (especially towards children), benevolence toward workers, and holiday family gatherings. His story, featuring a miserly business owner, Ebenezer Scrooge, who has a change of heart over Christmas Eve, seems to have paid off.
Christmas in Dickens’ era largely focused on fun and food, but today it’s equally associated with giving back. December is the most charitable month of the year. Those who are stingy towards others are called Scrooges.
A Christmas Carol wasn’t entirely driven by moral concerns. Dickens’ wife was pregnant with their fifth child at the time, and sales of his latest work had dropped off. The story was written in a mad rush in just six weeks. Thankfully for Dickens, it was an instant commercial success.
Why ghosts appear in A Christmas Carol
The exodus from the country prompted by the Industrial Revolution also threatened a loss of traditions and folklore. Those who left their ancestral villages might forget their histories. Extended winter breaks, ritualized in pastoral life, weren’t valued in modern factories. As the Industrial Revolution altered social customs, Dickens feared people would lose Christmas as a holiday altogether.