“A Christmas Carol” Review: Instant Christmas Classic 

London, 1843: Charles Dickens owed his publishers a book. As the year drew to a close, the pressure was on Dickens to complete something great. Sales of his other books were declining, he faced financial hardship, and his wife was pregnant with their fifth child. He claims to have “walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed”. What came of his nightly wonderings became an instant classic, and “A Christmas Carol” remains a classic through the years.

Purchase the book here or watch the review on YouTube.

Four Reasons It’s a Classic 

1) It Recaptured Christian Giving 

“A Christmas Carol” remains one of Dickens most famed works. It was written in just six weeks. One of its main attractions is the emphasis on giving to less fortunate. Ebenezer Scrooge is clocked with greed, and a sinister disposition. The Staves, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and others help turn the tide of Scrooge’s heart. It is the workers, the struggling, who hoist up the reason for the season.

According to Michael Slater, Dickens “intended to open its readers’ hearts towards those struggling to survive on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and to encourage practical benevolence, but also to warn of the terrible danger to society created by the toleration of widespread ignorance and actual want among the poor.”

Dickens’ aimed to encourage people to remember those who are less fortunate. 

2) Haunting 

What happens when we meet our Maker? Throughout the story, this thought hangs around like a fog. 

The ghosts were used by Dickens as the vehicle for a message, the vehicle echoes the answers we all must give on judgement day. Death is also an element implied with the ghosts. Likewise, paranormal occurrences ring truth to Scrooge’s skeptical ears. 

Ultimately, the question to Scrooge is this: What are you doing with your life? What do you value?  

3) Redemption 

Scrooge’s transformation demonstrates that redemption and grace are available to the worst sinners.

The story begins with the wealthy Scrooge, but he’s a lost soul. It takes not only the ghost of his former business partner, Marly, but three others to show him the past, the present, and what will be his future. If Scrooge, the retch, was lost, and he can be found, then it’s possible for all who are blinded by sin to see. 

4) Beautifully Written 

The novella gives us “Bah Humbug!” and the term “Scrooge.” It even popularized “Merry Christmas” which had not been in regular, widespread use. 

As with all great work, it opens with intriguing lines: “Marley was dead, to begin with.” That second clause, tell me more.  

And then the description of Scrooge:

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.” 

And lines like this:

“The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.”

Some other favorites include: 

• “You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?” “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
• “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” 
• “For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.” 

It’s hard to turn a page without reading memorable lines of philosophy or poetry, and often both. 

An Aside on Capitalism

Some have long held that Dickens intended a denunciation of capitalism: they are wrong. Free market capitalism is not about greed, want, or power. Those sinful things come with any economic or political system. Dickens point is less about the economic system than it is about values, Christian and otherwise. 

Dickens’ masterfully reminds readers, “To whom much is given, much is expected” and encourages Christian values as a counterweight to free market capitalism. 

It Remains A Classic

All sorts of emotions run throughout Dicken’s most famous Christmas story – shock, sadness, fear, joy, humility, shame, thankfulness, to name a few. It’s like being punched in the gut and then sitting in front of a fire with hot coco. Dickens balances heavy subjects with the beauty of his writing and the humility of the Cratchits.

For other Christmas Books, read our Christmas Children’s Book list or watch it on YouTube.