Come December, there are few stories as cherished as Charles Dickens’ iconic A Christmas Carol. Originally published on December 19, 1843, A Christmas Carol has never gone out of print and has seen countless adaptations, from plays to operas, films to TV series, and even one video game! Yet despite the festive associations many have with Dickens’ tale of the transformative powers of the Christmas spirit, the story also has deeply political origins that have gone largely unrecognized in modern iterations. To get to the core of Dickens’ holiday classic, we must understand the real-life history and influences that are foundational to it.
The 19th-century London in which Dickens lived and wrote was one of extreme poverty and social inequality. While other European countries underwent revolutionary restructuring, England was able to stave off such drastic changes with a series of limited reforms.
Under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel, the Tories reinvented themselves as Conservatives, advocating for limited state interference and low taxation. Dickens abhorred the Tories and was deeply concerned about their return to power. He published anti-Tory satires and aligned himself with those campaigning for social change in an increasingly divided Britain.
In the 1840s, England saw an economic depression that led to mass unemployment. With the rise of industrialization, people began flocking to urban centers where the poor lived in abject squalor. Simultaneously, failed harvests in the countryside lead to inflated bread prices. These events led to the decade being known as “The Hungry Forties.”
While many were out of work, there was one population that proved a consistent, if horrific, source of labor: children. In 1843, Parliament was presented with a paper outlining the terrible conditions poor children faced in factories and mines, with boys being sent to work “as soon as they could stand on their legs.”
This paper had a particular effect on Dickens. When the writer was a boy, his father had been thrown into debtor’s prison. The then 12-year-old Dickens had been forced to drop out of school and go to work at a shoe-blacking factory to support his family. From the outset of his career, Dickens wanted his fiction to “deliver a sledgehammer blow” to the wealthy and their ignorance toward the plight of poor children. He understood that while a political paper might not change minds and hearts, a novel could. As an adult, Dickens achieved literary fame through works such as Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickelby (1839), which were serialized and published in weekly installments. For the Victorian public, the arrival of a new chapter of a Dickens novel was akin to the release of a new episode of a beloved TV show.
Although his serialized releases were wildly popular, by 1843, Dickens himself was strapped for cash. His wife, Catherine, was pregnant with their fifth child, and he was also responsible for supporting his elderly father. His most recent novel The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843) had sold so poorly that his relationship with publishers was beginning to sour. Dickens needed a hit, and he needed it fast.
In October, he traveled to Manchester to give a speech on the importance of education across social classes. While there, he visited his sister Fanny and nephew Henry. Henry was disabled and would become the inspiration for Tiny Tim. Dickens’ family history, paired with his own precarious financial state and increased political dissatisfaction crystallized in the form of A Christmas Carol.
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Dickens wrote the 66-page novella over the course of six weeks, working during the day and taking 15–20-mile walks around London at night. The story of A Christmas Carol, while no doubt charming and festive, pulled no punches when it came to Dickens’ beliefs. In one scene that has largely been cut from modern adaptations, Ebenezer Scrooge meets two children beneath the cloak of the Ghost of Christmas Present. The children are described as “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable…a boy and a girl.” Scrooge asks the Ghost if they belong to him, the Ghost replies that they belong to Man and are Ignorance and Want, respectively.
The story was exactly what Dickens needed and immediately became a huge success. Within a month of its publication, Dickens was embroiled in a legal battle with a publisher who had begun printing pirated copies. By the first anniversary of its publication, it had been reprinted 11 times. It was so impactful on British culture, particularly around the holidays, that before its release, the English did not use the phrase “Merry Christmas.” And of course, being a “Scrooge” became synonymous with being a penny-pinching miser.
At the heart of A Christmas Carol is a reminder of the generosity and goodwill that we can and should extend toward one another, particularly the most vulnerable among us. As industrialization led to consumerism, Dickens’ story reminded the public that holiday celebrations are not about what you can receive, but what you can give. Ebenezer Scrooge’s moral arc would go on to inspire holiday classics such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and would be referenced in classic films such as Home Alone, in which the elderly neighbor, Old Man Marley, acts as sort of a Scrooge figure and shares his last name with Scrooge’s late business partner, Jacob Marley.
A Christmas Carol teaches us that while the impulse to write off the poor, the ill, the suffering, or the uneducated as inferior and distasteful can be strong, Tiny Tim’s eternal words are a reminder of a surprisingly radical philosophy: “God bless us every one.”
To Learn More, Read…
“An Introduction to Victorian England (1837–1901),” English Heritage.
“The real story behind Charles’ Dickens A Christmas Carol,” Penguin UK, December 2, 2020.
