Sorry Shakespeare, but Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the greatest story in all of western art.
There are a few reasons I believe this to be true. While it is a story of Christmas, Dickens invokes the religious aspect of the holiday sparingly. What is presented are actual Christian values, going back to the message of Christ in the New Testament, but Ebenezer Scrooge doesn’t have a visit from Jesus, or a faith-based revelation. Rather, Scrooge is redeemed simply by seeing the path he has set himself upon, and how it affects those around him. His change in spirit is reflected by his works in the material world. Plus, it has both ghosts and time travel!
The story is told from Scrooge’s perspective. If you read the story (or watch one of the excellent screen adaptations) and believe yourself to be Bob Cratchit, you are probably not doing enough self-examination. But regardless, Scrooge begins the story as a two-dimensional character, but Dickens excavates the character through empathy and understanding. A man is set on his path by past experiences, and often hardened against the plights of those around him by his own struggles. Scrooge is such a figure, and as he watches his past unfold before him, we come to see him as a man of immense regret.
The only figures who help Scrooge steer away from his path toward Marley’s fate are four spirits. It is not the responsibility of Bob Cratchit or Fred to change Scrooge’s heart, that change must come from within. The four ghosts–Marley, Past, Present, and Yet to Come–are all personal to Scrooge. While the three time spirits are universal in concept, they only reveal things from his life.
What strikes me about A Christmas Carol is both its simplicity in structure and message. We live in a time where the world is run by “Christians” proffering hate and heartlessness: migrants dropped off in front of the Vice Presidential residence in record low temperatures on Christmas Eve, continued attacks on the wellbeing of trans people, fear-mongering, etc. But Dickens story acts as a concentrate of the parts of Jesus’ message that are being ignored: charity, treating your neighbor as yourself, and caring for the poor. These messages are universal, and not unique to Christ, nor am I saying that the only people to get anything out of this story are Christians. Rather, it is that this message is universal, and Dickens was also writing in a time where Christians in power were allowing people to go hungry and live in inhumane conditions. The story is as political as it is personal, pushing back against Thomas Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, and Thomas Carlyle.
This passage on such hypocrisy always strikes me:
There are some upon this earth of yours 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 our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.
While it’s message is powerful and helps cements it as a great work, the way it is delivered is equally important. There is humor and cheer throughout the story, except in some of its most dark passages, which make it a pleasure to revisit. Dickens was not always a succinct writer, but this novella is perfect. His prowess as a writer, to create fascinating characters and clever turns of phrase are equally on display, yet this can easily be read aloud in a short length of time.
The resilience the story has in adaptation is also remarkable, with everyone from Mr. Magoo to the Muppets taking the story on to varying degrees of faithfulness. Even Capra does a riff on it, giving us It’s a Wonderful Life, about a man with Cratchit values in the social position of Scrooge. And as fiction, it includes elements of science fiction (the aforementioned time travel), horror (ghosts), and allegory, which I think help it resonate for so many years.
Above all, A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption and atonement. A call for all of us to be better, and to share what we have with those who do not have the same benefits and privileges. To make better the world around us by satiating Want and Ignorance with comfort and knowledge. Ebenezer Scrooge is a model of self-reflection and change, a hopeful figure that seeks to improve the world around him as best he can.
He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
Merry Christmas.