Season's Reading

At this time of year, I always curl up with one of my favorite little books.

 

Charles Dickens' story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by four ghostly visitors, is one of the Victorian author's best loved tales. Ever since its publication in 1843, it has had an enduring influence on the way we think about Christmas, and celebrate it. In fact, the story is so ingrained in our collective consciousness that Dickens is deeply identified with the spirit of the season, and the very ritual of Christmas, in the English speaking world. It's often been said, by learned academics, and literary critics, that Charles Dickens virtually invented the modern concept of Christmas single handed.

 

First published on December 17th 1843, A Christmas Carol, had already sold 5,000 copies by Christmas Eve of that same year. For its publishers, Chapman and Hall, this was the beginning of many costly-to-produce reprints. Since its debut, the story has never been out of print and there have been innumerable versions of the story on the stage and screen this last century and a half. The Victorian ghost story now has an institutional status in our culture.  

 

 

When it first came out, England was in a period of social and economic hardship. The 1840s were often referred to as the "Hungry Forties", and Dickens' story helped promote the concept of Christian charity without sermonizing or being in the least bit sectarian. Critics lauded the humanity of the story. "A national benefit," said Thackeray, "and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness." Lord Jeffrey, a leading critic of Dickens' work, was moved to write to his public target: "Blessings on your kind heart... you may be sure you have done more good by this little publication, fostered more kindly feelings, and prompted more positive acts of beneficence, than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom since Christmas 1842." 

 

What do I like about the story? It might be the premise and the brilliant character of Scrooge. Is it possible for a miserly old London money dealer to be converted by supernatural forces to goodness in the space of a single night? Yes. Scrooge has a "satori", a sudden, blinding, surge of enlightenment, and finds it in his heart to become benevolent, and good natured, via the assistance of his four ghostly visitors. You could say that the story, and this ghostly premise, has haunted me ever since the Christmases of boyhood. 

 

It's probably why I seek out this old story every Christmas and devour it like plum pudding. And take in some of the old film versions. Unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch bought the rights to the best screen adaptation, Scrooge, with Alastair Sim from 1951. However, with the advent of YouTube, there is always a copy (with compressed sound) to watch around this time of year. Some years ago, in Bangkok, Christmas 2011, I was laid up with an injury and home alone (the wife and mum-in-law were in Burma). I managed to get some mince pies from Villa Market on Soi 11 and settled down to Scrooge on YouTube (at slow Thai internet speed). 

 

There are a couple of creepy animations that I remember from childhood, too. One miserable Christmas, in Camberwell in London in 1980, I caught the 1969 animated version on TV. In this Australian production, Marley's Ghost rather looks like a Scooby Doo monster and the ending is different to the immortal book. Another animated adaptation, truncated but true to the text, is a 1971 Chuck Jones Oscar winner, featuring the voices of Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern from the 1951 version. The demonic figures of Ignorance and Want, the haunting savage children, gave me nightmares and still scare me to this very day. 

 

But it is always to the book itself that I return each year at Christmas setting. My copy is one that I picked up in Waterstones in London back in 2013. I'd love to get my paws on a first edition. Originally produced with a salmon-brown cover, gilt letters, colored pages and illustrations by Punch artist John Leech, the book was so costly to produce that it proved a financial loss for Dickens and he was "very loath to lose the money". He went on to make up some of the losses with highly popular public readings of "his blessed Christmas gospel", in ninety minute platform pieces that he repeated from 1853-1870 on 127 sold out occasions. 

 

 

Some think that Dickens is too soft-hearted and sentimental. Hilary Mantel said as much in the UK Press only just last week. "Such awful stuff," she railed, "coarse, sentimental, conceited." Further back, the artist John Rushkin was just as scathing, dismissing Dickens' much loved tale as nothing more than "mistletoe and pudding". However, one avid reader, Vincent Van Gogh, was a big fan of the Carol and Dickens' other Christmas ghost stories. "There are things in them so profound," he wrote in a letter to his brother in 1889, "that one must read them over and over again." That's why I return to the Christmas fires of the 1840s, and the lessons, and memories, of hard boyhood every season, "for it is good to be children sometimes and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself." 

On that coarse and sentimental note, it's time for me to pack up HQ for the season and depart for Christmas festivities at Fairy Gill's ball. Features a boar's head, mince pies, yule logs and carols roared with blithesome din. 

 

Until next time... 

 

The Male Trailing Spouse.