Dickens' Christmas Spirit

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Not having taken part in any of the true miseries known to man, I only know about them through words and images shared by others. The plight of the poor throughout history, and now on the very planet I inhabit, is beyond the comprehension of someone like me who lives in the best of comfort and health. As I prepared this post, I read about the Poor Laws in Britain’s history, fascinating and horrifying. (You can read a good wiki article about Britain’s Poor Laws here.) The New Poor Law of 1834, enacted a decade before Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, was a huge legislation to ensure that no one would receive relief from poverty outside the parish workhouses, which were intentionally kept miserable so that a person wouldn’t be tempted to rely on them out of indolence. Dickens himself had to work at a factory as a child, and the anguish he experienced remained with him his whole life, infusing it in his novels that are so poignantly sympathetic to the poor.

Earlier the same year that he published A Christmas Carol . . .

Dickens was keenly touched by the lot of poor children . . . In early 1843, he toured the Cornish tin mines where he saw children working in appalling conditions. The suffering he witnessed there was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several London schools set up for the education of the capital's half-starved, illiterate street children. Inspired by the February 1843 parliamentary report exposing the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon poor children called Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Dickens planned in May 1843 to publish an inexpensive political pamphlet tentatively titled, "An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child" but changed his mind, deferring the pamphlet's production until the end of the year. He wrote to Dr. Southwood Smith, one of four commissioners responsible for the Second Report, about his change in plans: "[Y]ou will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force – twenty thousand times the force – I could exert by following out my first idea." The pamphlet would become A Christmas Carol. (Copied from this wiki article)

After re-watching the 1938 film "A Christmas Carol" with Reginald Owen on the weekend, I was reminded what the magic and mystery of Christmas is. We have the Christmas energy inside us all the time, all the love we have ever encountered with family, friends and even strangers. The joy of human connection, even in the most dire of circumstances, even when we are surrounded by greed. The possibility that with the right outlook, joy is always possible, and can always be spread to another. At Christmas, we pull out our lifetime of stored love when we re-open Christmas boxes. White lights remind us of stars that have shone on every man and woman in history – the same stars. Imagine. We are all one human organism. The magic we share is available outside of Christmas! For some, it seems especially hidden at Christmas. What a shame, if we forget it after Christmas, or miss it during Christmas when it is eclipsed by commercialism.

For me, old decorations and illustrations bring out a special nostalgic feeling that makes Christmas special. I am a big fan of Arthur Rackham (good bio here), the British illustrator who was hugely successful at the turn of the 20th century known for his "depictions of gnomes, goblins, witches, and fairies, as well as his anthropomorphized trees," so I am posting five of his illustrations for the 1915 edition of A Christmas Carol, along with a few quotes from Dickens’ classic novel. Can you imagine a world without this story? Apparently the greeting “Merry Christmas” was first used after this novel. 

Bob Cratchit went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, 
twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve.

Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown,

which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall

"If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"How now?" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever

"What do you want with me?"

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in

restless haste and moaning as they went

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea -- on, on -- until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.

Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig

The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.


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"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can."


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"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit."
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