“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”
“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.
“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? 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!”
“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.
“Nephew!” returned the uncle, sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”
“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”
“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!”
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
The Victorian period revived Christmas traditions that had been in decline after Oliver Cromwell’s Puritanism and the impact of the Industrial Revolution. A significant agent of this revival was Dickens whose 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, offered a powerful message about the meaning of Christmas through the moral resurrection of the avaricious protagonist, Scrooge.
Scrooge’s rampant materialism and adherence to the controversial beliefs of Malthus who believed economic imbalance should be corrected by the ‘ natural’ deaths of the starving poor (think of Scrooge’s ‘surplus population’) is transformed by the intervention of four ghostly visitors who each, in turn, remind the morally dead Scrooge about the need for kindness and compassion for others.
The spiritual transformation of Scrooge is reflected in his newfound joy in Christmas and Dickens’ vivid representation of Christmas in the novella serves to reflect this moral journey and offer hope even to the apparently most undeserving.
The extract begins with a ‘cheerful voice’ offering ‘ A Merry Christmas’ to ‘ uncle’ Scrooge. This exuberant act of goodwill appears almost disembodied as the good wishes arrive before the physical presence of the ‘ nephew.’ This reveals the power of Fred’s festive goodwill and joy and validates his commitment to Christmas values. His ‘spirit’ is naturally uplifting and generous and shows how Dickens is exploring the meaning and ‘spirit’ of Christmas in different ways, culminating of course in the necessary intervention by supernatural ‘spirits’ in the grim materialist world of Scrooge, the Victorian money lender.
Fred’s voice encapsulates all that Dickens believes is affirmative about Christmas: family connections, goodwill, generosity and joy. The reader may be slightly surprised that Scrooge is affectionately acknowledged as ‘uncle’ and we come to realise that the enduring, teasing affection of Fred for his prickly relative serves as a powerful testimony to the loving memory of his dead mother, Fan who was the nurturing sister of the now irascible, Scrooge.
Christmas is thus seen to be a time of renewal, and the almost metaphysical challenges of ‘ fog and frost’ have not deterred the determined Fred from visiting his Christmas averse uncle. The repetition of ‘humbug’ by Scrooge underlines his cynical negation of Fred’s good wishes and Christmas joy. The word ‘humbug’ encapsulates Scrooge’s antagonism towards the message of Christmas, an antagonism that isolates Scrooge-like the ‘solitary oyster’ mentioned earlier in this stave and foreshadows the considerable efforts needed by the ghostly visitations to change Scrooge’s outlook on Christmas and the poor in particular.
The poor were regarded by many Victorians as a problem to swept aside and vilified, rather than to be offered charity and help. Dickens’s own experience of poverty is reflected in A Christmas Carol and the second stave’s representation of Scrooge’s lonely Christmas at a harsh school is highly charged emotionally because of this parallel.
Interestingly, the use of dialogue allows a compelling exchange about Christmas to take place between Scrooge and Fred. The naturalness of the exchange brilliantly identifies the differences of outlook and also undermines Scrooge’s blindness to his own moral degradation and spiritual unhappiness.
‘What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.’
‘ What reason have you to be dismal? You’re rich enough’
Here, the reader can witness the impasse between nephew and uncle. We also recognize that this moment could be a potential epiphany or revelation for Scrooge. His negative attitude towards the values of Christmas has brought him no happiness. Fred neatly undermines Scrooge’s inhuman philosophy. Yet the revealing exchange cannot change Scrooge by itself. His avarice is too deeply embedded within his character. He requires something cataclysmic to shift his beliefs and this shift arrives through the intervention of the supernatural which is gifted Scrooge presumably out of loyalty and even affection by his dead partner Marley, who has no such opportunity for redemption.
This extract with its theatrical staging of the confrontation between Scrooge’s materialistic values and Fred’s Christmas inspired capacity for forgiveness and friendship is further developed in the Fezziwig episode where the wealthy boss offers his workers a party funded by himself to celebrate Christmas. Significantly, there is ‘ no more work ‘ demanded of the workers on Christmas Eve and the ‘fuel was heaped upon the fire’ in direct contrast to the later extreme meanness of Scrooge towards Bob Cratchit and even himself as shown by Scrooge’s life-denying, ‘ meagre fire.’ It is also important to see the ‘ruddy’ life-affirming face of Fred being linked to the celebratory joy of Fezziwig and the idea of fire being a symbol of sustenance and humanity.
The playfulness of Fezziwig’s Christmas is also reflected in Fred’s own Christmas where ‘ it is good to be children sometimes.’ This capacity for joyous play like innocent, unworldly ‘children’ affirms the importance of families and community. The reader witnesses the suspension of seriousness in a spirited way, which subsequently creates closer and happier relationships. Likewise, the Cratchits with their vivacious commitment to the small ‘goose’ and to their family togetherness, offer a keen contrast to Scrooge’s lonely plate of ‘gruel’ on Christmas Eve.
Eating is central to the vision of Christmas explored by Dickens and the attitude of each character to food is revealing of their humanity and thankfulness. This is also demonstrated in later novels like Great Expectations, where a child’s act of kindness in wishing a starving convict well with his food, leads to the child’s eventual, unexpected fortune.
The extract ends with Fred’s philosophy of Christmas and the reader senses that Dickens is speaking through his lively character of his own personal reasons for celebrating Christmas so fully. ‘ Shut-up hearts’ can open fully because of the ‘ pleasant time’ that is Christmas and this insight becomes fulfilled as we watch the resurrection of Scrooge’s lost soul through the revaluation of his life and those ‘fellow -passengers’ accompanying him, not least his double Tiny Tim whose suffering he assuages in order to heal also save the ‘solitary child…neglected. by his friends’ who needed a second chance granted by the spirits, but inspired by the enduring love of characters like Fred and even Jacob Marley
