FAMILIES plunged into poverty and relying on charity to eat, children waiting too long for vital health treatment, workers on zero-hour contracts working excessive hours in substandard conditions at the whim of employers, and the rich just keep getting richer …
These are themes of life increasingly all too familiar in austerity Britain authored by the Tory elite. But it’s a different story we’re dipping into here, the plotline of which should belong well and truly in the past. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a ghostly festive story with a moral message for its Victorian audience, was 175 years old last week.
Published in 1843, it recounts the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kind and generous good guy.
The story opens on Christmas Eve, when Scrooge makes his clerk Bob Cratchit work in the cold because he’s too mean to buy coal to light the fire, even though he is a man of wealth. His meanness is underlined when he refuses to give money to charity collectors.
Later that night he is visited by the ghost of Marley. The Ghost of Christmas Past wakes Scrooge and shows him scenes from his childhood, his apprenticeship and his failed engagement.
The Ghost of Christmas Present then materialises and takes him to the Cratchits’ home, where he is saddened by the poor health of their son Tiny Tim. He is also shown the warmth felt by others who celebrate Christmas with friends and family.
Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come presents Scrooge with visions of his miserable and friendless death. This does the trick and shocks Scrooge into transforming his attitude to life.
A Christmas Carol was intended as a moral tale and Dickens wanted it to reflect the attitudes of the day towards poverty, particularly child poverty. He also tapped in to what had become a revival of the festive season and on the back of this its popularity grew.
He put his own humanitarian mark upon the holiday and even popularised the phrase “Merry Christmas” among the Victorian public. Scrooge’s trademark “Bah! Humbug!” entered the lexicon, as did the word “Scrooge” to define a miser. Dickens had captured the zeitgeist while reinforcing his vision of Christmas, which focused on charitable values, generosity of spirit and the ability of humanity to have a change of heart.
Dickens’s story has endured and has been the source of countless adaptations for screen and stage – not bad for a novella which was written in all of six weeks.
Arguably, the message of A Christmas Carol is as relevant now as it ever was, a stark reminder that child poverty is on the rise in modern Scotland and Tory austerity is biting ever more viciously for a growing number of families. All this as the Ghost of Brexit yet to come hovers chillingly.
To borrow from Tiny Tim’s famous declaration: “God help us, every one!”
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