Martin H. Sable (essay date 1986)


Martin H. Sable (essay date 1986)

SOURCE: “The Day of Atonement in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol,” in Tradition, Vol. 22, No. 3, Fall, 1986, pp. 66–76.

[In the following essay, Sable debates Dickens's familiarity with Judaism and finds parallels in Scrooge's conversion to the three main aspects of the Jewish Day of Atonement: repentance, prayer, and charity.]

A Christmas Carol is a permanent fixture in Western literature and popular culture, if only because it is retold at Christmas-time annually. As a morality tale it is...

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