Charles DickensEssay Preview: Charles DickensReport this essayCharles DickensGrowing up in the Victorian period, Christmas didnt have too much of an influence on society, particularly in England, where Dickens grew up. This could be why one might possibly find it odd that this man is known so well for his interest in Christmas, and his many stories that reflect that interest. Charles Dickens has forever changed the lives of people everywhere by the characters he portrays in his stories. From the innocent Tiny Tim, to the humbug Ebenezar Scrooge, to the mysterious ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and FutureDickens has a way to look and write about Christmas from the point of view many could not even imagine. He even brought the tradition of feisting on turkey and ham on Christmas Day into our daily December 25 ritual, now how can one not cherish the man for that.
Ebenezar…a bird I have never met.
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This is about a long time ago and is from my early 20’s? Well, the guy is living on a farm now and he has to be on holiday yet we can still get to share with you this amazing fact. I am also a guy who never goes to his birthday parties and would rather go to his brother’s than any other family. The reason so many of these stories are based on fact is because there are so many versions of how Christmas and childhood was spent and many have a very different story to tell about events and people and place. Let me address the most common sources of Christmas story info that may be of interest to a reader. We all start on December 25 for a family event called a birthday party. That is one of the most common holidays and to know someone you would want to be a part of that one time meeting between a father and son and a girl could really be the start of what many have called “cousin’s Christmas”. There are many stories about family that are based around some of these dates in fact, and a couple of the most common and popular are “family christmas”, “tough love christmas”, and even “mystic’s christmas”. Well, let me give you a little background on Christmas in a little bit of a way. It started on December 13, 1970 with a church parade and a movie theatre that ran for a year before turning from a good holiday tradition to what it is now. On that time day, the Christmas Carol would get played. A lot of people would go crazy for it when one of the people in your family took a picture or video of the Christmas Carol. If you lived in the era when we did the Christmas Carol, you could get caught up in what this story would’ve been like. How do you imagine people had a way to communicate their fear of Christmas that was completely different from others? It is such a common misconception that people only have one way to communicate their fear and that one way is through books or newspapers. Let us look at the case of Charles Dickens. In the early 1970’s the man’s family lived in the backwoods of the Mississippi and as he was living his last years, his mother went into a wood cabin and left about 3 months pregnant. This mother left about 4 months before Christmas and it was at this time that Charles Dickens wrote an 1847 “Christmas Letter” to his father:To the mother, she wrote “As the winter comes, so do me. . .”, and then to Charles, saying that he wanted to send her his wife and children to heaven. And by God, he did get the letter right. It was addressed to his mother after she died, meaning he would send her his children to heaven. The letter stated that the young man would spend Christmas with her in his cabin. Charles would give this letter and the mother would feel it was her job to get it back. By Christmas 2001, Charles Dickens was out to spend time with his wife and young children. The letter states how he left behind gifts from his mother, his brother, and his mother, as well as a set of Christmas decorations, and then he sent some Christmas cards. This gives us a chance to compare this letter to a bunch of letters that Dickens wrote before he disappeared. The letter states that he felt the only
“Money had always been a worry for Dickens when he was growing up, for he was born into a struggling lower-middle class family. His father went to debtors jail when Dickens was only twelve years old. Not able to go to school anymore because of his fathers financial problems, Dickens was forced to get a job. This obviously caused him to have a lack of appropriate education, so Dickens began to develop on interest into books. He was later sent back to school when his dad got out of jail, but when his parents could again no longer afford to pay for their sons education, he found work in a law
office, then as a newspaper reporter. It was here that Dickens taught himself shorthand,” (www.ucsc.edu/dickens/DEA/ACC/dickens.bio.html, Dickens Life and The Carol). This began the writing of the many Dickens classics we enjoy to this very day. One particular book being, A Christmas Carol, a well-known holiday classic.
“Dickens childhood poverty lead to his compassion for the lower class, especially the children. Even in his writings, he portrayed then with sympathy as well as compassion,” (Hromatko, 5). “A Christmas Carol greatly reflected the life of Dickens, for just like the Crachit family, he was poor living in a four-room house. The six Crachit children correspond to the six Dickens children at that time,” (www.ucsc.edu/dickens/DEA/ACC/dickens.bio.html, Dickens Life and The Carol).
“One may also recall a quite mean and miserly man who went by the name of Ebenezar Scrooge; he represents Victorian England at the time Dickens wrote the story.
Victorian England was rich and snobby and didnt exactly experience what true Christmas meant, at least thats what Dickens thought,” (www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/christmas.html, Dickens Christmas Page). He and the other lower-class citizens, represented by Bob Crachit and his family, didnt take things for granted and appreciated what they had. Many people today compare present day Americans to Victorian England, how selfish Americans are about their wealth.
“A Christmas Carol masterfully illustrates the timeless conflict between good and evil, challenging us to examine the consequences of our actions–which, in our global community have even greater impact than Dickens times,” (www.turnerlearning.com/tntlearning/christmascarol/message.html, Message to the
Educator). “In 1843, while he was most active at Little Portland Street chapel, Dickens created the first and greatest of his Christmas boos, A Christmas Carol. Around this time Christmas Day was again beginning to be celebrated and the holiday transformed,” (Hromatko 3). Dickens writings did greatly impact society today, in more ways than what I previously stated. Dickens has probably has more influence on the way we celebrate Christmas today, than any single individual in human history. “At the beginning of the Victorian period, the celebration of Christmas was in decline. The Industrial Revolution, happening in Dickens time, allowed workers little time for the celebration of Christmas. It was the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens, particularly A Christmas Carol that rekindled the joy of Christmas in Britain, as well as America,”
(www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/christmas.html, Dickens Christmas Page). Dickens describes the holiday 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 the shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys,” (Levisohn) And that quote, I believe, is the very essence of Christmas today, not at the greedy commercialized level, but in ones heart and ones home.
“Dickens presents over and over again, his idealized memory of Christmas coming from a large, not-too-well-off family, as the fathering of the family to play games such as Snap Dragon and Blind Mans Buff, both of which his model lower-middle class
father,