illustration of Ebenezer Scrooge in silhouette walking toward a Christmas tree and followed by the three ghosts

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

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What attitude towards Christmas is presented in Dickens' A Christmas Carol?

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In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens presents a range of attitudes towards Christmas, from Scrooge's initial disdain to Tiny Tim's innocent joy. Scrooge sees Christmas as a disruption, but learns its true meaning by the story's end. The Cratchits make the best of their poverty, while Tiny Tim embodies joy and compassion. Ultimately, Dickens promotes human charity and compassion as essential virtues.

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In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens presents a broad range of attitudes toward Christmas, everything from Scrooge's disdain to Tiny Tim's innocent joy. Let's look at some examples.

Scrooge, of course, hates Christmas and everything to do with it. To him, it is merely “humbug,” a disruption of his business, and a waste of time. Of course, as the story proceeds, we realize why Scrooge thinks this way. As a young boy, his Christmases were lonely. He learned to love Christmas as a clerk with Mr. Fezziwig, but his outlook soured as business and money became everything to him. He lost all joy. Of course, through the course of the story, Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas, and by the end he is a man who keeps Christmas better than anyone.

We see other attitudes toward Christmas in this tale as well. Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit put on...

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brave faces and make the best Christmas they can for their children even in the midst of their poverty. Jacob Marley as a ghost now suffers more at Christmas than at any other time because of his refusal to live the love of Christmas during his life. Scrooge's former beloved spreads peace throughout the year, but she gives special comfort to the people she serves at Christmas.

Finally, we have Tiny Tim, the innocent boy who probably sees Christmas more clearly than anyone else. He experiences pure joy at Christmastime, and he brings that joy to everyone else, including, in the end, to Scrooge himself.

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What views on human behavior does Dickens portray in A Christmas Carol?

In his essay, "Some Candid Opinions on A Christmas Carol,"  Norman Barrow, who is himself an author, criticizes the lack of humor and the overly didactic style in the novella, suggesting that Dickens wrote his work because with his renown acquired from such works as Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers,

Dickens had discovered that he could sway the nation, and so, when Christmas time of 1843 came round, he decided to sway the nation with a Christmas Moral Story.

Certainly, this work by Dickens is an obvious medium for Dickens's attack upon the insensitivity of the upperclasses of his Victorian society for the poor and destitute as Ebenezer Scrooge personifies all the aloofness and cruelty of this aristocracy.  Likewise, Tiny Tim becomes a composite of all that Dickens wishes to teach about the poor, for, as Barrow remarks, he is decidedly "an angel" and everyone in the family reveres him.  Clearly, Tiny Tim is the mouthpiece for Dickens's sermon on human behavior as he is in marked contrast to Ebenezer Scrooge, who dismisses the lower classes, asking if there are no "workhouses....no prisons?"

Thus, through Tiny Tim, Dickens voices his social criticism on the mercenary and heartless in contrast to the child who is innocent, loving, and charitable in heart as he exclaims, "God bless us all!" Then, Dickens's somewhat maudlin depiction of the Crachit home without Tiny Tim shows the loss that is felt without love,

"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost,"in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved.  If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."

The moral lesson, then, in A Christmas Carol is the one of human charity and unselfish behavior that brings happiness, love, and meaning to humans' lives. For the social reformer, Charles Dickens, compassion for one's fellow man is paramount.

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