Christmas time is getting closer and closer; the shops adorn their windows with brightening lights, colourful and mesmerising decorations enrich the grey and austere streets, multi-sizes Christmas trees pop out in every corner of the city, music and cheering songs continuously resound in the passers-by’ ears.
Among the endless short-stories and novels celebrating this specific moment of the year, ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens is likely the most famous and significative literary work that express the meaning of Christmas. The Carol influenced the popular culture so intensely that a myriad of authors – and scriptwriters – claimed that it had deeply inspired them. Dickens published the novella in 1843, on 19th of December precisely, after six intense weeks working on it. It’s said that the writer composed the biggest part of the story at night, and he used to have long and enlightening walks to clear up his ideas. The novella was an immediate success. The magic of this story lays in the contraposition of its main characters – Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim – and in the powerful creation of a deep sympathetic feeling towards the poor and encouragement of benevolence. When Dickens wrote the Carol, the British were rediscovering the Christmas’s old traditions; Christmas card, trees, songs, and carols were becoming more and more popular after the harsh decline the Cromwell Puritans’ scrutiny had caused. The following Industrial Revolution had left no time to think about celebrating. This revival, however, was only one of the reasons which motivated Dickens to create a Christmas story. John Dickens, the writer’s father, was arrested and jailed for debt when Charles was only eleven. Although the family belonged to the middle-class, the author had to leave school and go to work in his father’s boot blackening factory to support the family. The experience showed Dickens the worst side of the industrialisation: the extreme and growing poverty of the working class, especially the dramatic situation of the children. Charles was completely shocked. During his entire career, Dickens visited ragged schools, mines, and participated in fundraising and public speech to point out the terrible condition of the working class and promote an educational reform. In 1843, a Parliamentary report exposed the condition of the working class’s children, and Dickens wrote a letter to Southwood Smith, a commissioner of the report, to point out the necessity of dealing with the situation. The author realised that that the most effective way to reach the public opinion out was to compose a deep-felt Christmas story instead of writing political leaflet. Dickens shared the belief that the nostalgic English Christmas would restore the social harmony on the modern world with the author Washington Irving. In ‘A Christmas Carol’ we had strong and meaningful descriptions of the reinvigorate tradition; the opulence of the festivity and the rich and pleasant scents of cinnamon, tea, pastries, candied fruit, and figs were used to point out the working-class condition. The transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge remained magical, but acquired a more political meaning, too. Numerous literary experts pointed out that the path Scrooge went through symbolised the redemption of a sinner. The historian Penne Restad preferred to identify the change happened to Scrooge as the “Carol philosophy”, in which the readers could perceive the victory of altruism and charity over individualism and patriarchy. Dickens criticised the British attitude towards poverty, but he aroused a strong feeling of charity which didn’t turn the attention of the middle-class away. The author wanted to create a charitable consciousness in the citizens who enjoyed a better condition and well-being. He deeply felt sorrow and shocked that the society was overlooking the country fellows who were struggling to survive. The Carol philosophy was exactly this: a deep intense feeling of sympathy for the less-lucky and a strong ‘call to arms’ to change the situation and create a more liveable society for its members. Charles Dickens has always had a lively interest in Christmas – the short-stories “A Christmas dinner” in Sketches by Boz and “The story of the Goblin who stole Sexton” in The Pickwick Papers, for example. “Great Expectations” began with the scene of a Christmas dinner, and, in 1851, the writer published “What Christmas is as we grow older”, a short story about the change of perception of Christmas.
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