Charles Dickens invented our modern Christmas, with all its charms and excesses. When the Puritans were in power in the 1600s, Christmas festivities and plum puddings were banned. Even up to the 1840s, Christmas was not much more than a date on the church calendar.
Then along came Dickens and his book A Christmas Carol, and December was never the same again. He published the book as a potboiler in 1844 to recover his finances after the failure of Martin Chuzzelewit. As everyone knows, A Christmas Carol became a mega best seller. Dickens even made an American tour, reading his sentimental story to rapt audiences.
Now Christmas on both sides of the Atlantic is forever associated with the protean figure of Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser who was scared straight and became a kind of Father Christmas figure himself. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens tells the heartwarming story of a miser transformed by the Christmas spirit and of a poor family rising above their poverty and counting their blessings, even when they didn’t have any. It makes us feel good, as the author intended, and it helps restore our faith in human nature.
There are many interpretations of this little story, but I think what Dickens tries to say in A Christmas Carol is exactly what he appears to say. It is possible to change your mind, and even your whole character. This subversive idea was stolen straight from The Bible, a book with which Dickens was intimately acquainted.
Scrooge was famous for holding on to his money. Only after three tiresome spirits had visited him did he change his mind and discover the joys of giving. Don't let this happen to you. Don't risk being haunted by the ghost of pledge drives past and present and, worst of all, the ghost of pledge drives yet to come. If you’ve been holding out against all our appeals so far, you too can follow the example of the admirable Mr. Scrooge, and change your mind.
