The Backstory: Making a Statement With “A Christmas Carol”

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol . . inspired by political outrage? That’s the story and it makes sense when you hear what he went through and what he was seeing in London back in 1843.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we've just gotten through the Christmas season, and one
of the most recognizable stories is Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol.
It popularized the term Merry Christmas. For gosh sakes, it's
warm and full of life lessons. But what's this about
Dickens being a political rabble rouser and his warm, fuzzy
story being inspired by a statement he was trying to

(00:21):
make but nobody was listening to. I'm Patty Steele making
a point by telling a story that's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. As the Christmas season winds down,
it's interesting to trace some of the origins of our traditions,

(00:41):
especially the stories we tell. Okay, perfect example, and no,
we're not talking about Diehard, which, despite lots of disagreement,
even Bruce Willis said was absolutely not a Christmas movie.
What do you think of that? We're talking about Charles
Dickens A Christmas Carol. It was originally published in eighteen
forty three, and, as you probably already know, is the

(01:03):
story of a nasty, miserly old guy named Ebenezer Scrooge.
In the tale, he is visited by the ghost of
his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who introduces him to
the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and ominously, the ghost
of Christmas yet to come. By the end of the story,
Scrooge has had his wits scared out of him and

(01:26):
he becomes a kinder, gentler man. So what made Dickens
write a Christmas Carol? Well, First of all, it came
about at the same time the Victorians in England were
turning Christmas celebrations into a warm, festive, family oriented holiday.
Instead of either the insane adults only drinking fest it
was for a lot of folks, or the ultra religious

(01:49):
snow festivities at all occasions it was for others. This
was the era in which Christmas trees came to be
and Christmas Carols were becoming more popular again. Presents and
big feasts were all the rage. By late eighteen forty two,
the year before A Christmas Carol was published, Dickens was
doing pretty well. He'd had six major works and a

(02:11):
number of short stories published over the past few years. Then,
on New Year's Eve of eighteen forty two, he began
publishing a serial novel called Martin Chuzzlewit as a monthly release.
He loved it. The public not so much. Sales were
not great, his wife was pregnant with their fifth child,
and Dickens needed money since his publishers were also threatening

(02:35):
to reduce his salary because of those poor sales. Now,
at the same time, he was really disturbed by the
living conditions of the poor in London, particularly London street children,
and all the holiday excess only made Dickens feel worse
for the poor and the suffering. You see, Charles had
grown up in a middle class family, but his dad

(02:56):
was not a careful guy when it came to money,
and he wound up in Debtors Prison when Charles was
twelve years old. Yeah, Debtor's prison was a real thing
in those days. Now. In order to help support his family,
Charles had to sell his own book collection, leave school
and work at a dirty, rat infested shoe polish factory.
It shocked him and left him feeling outraged by the

(03:19):
conditions the poor lived with, which influenced his writing. By
the eighteen forties, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing
and Dickens toward orphanages, schools, factories and minds where he
saw little children working under terrible conditions. Dickens was horrified
and he wanted Londoners to know what was happening. He

(03:39):
started by writing a political pamphlet called an Appeal to
the People of England on behalf of the poor Man's
Child as a long title, but he changed his mind.
He felt an allegory type story would get the attention
of more people than a political lecture about poverty and injustice,
so he began a Christmas Carol in October of eight

(04:00):
teen forty three. He was so passionate about the subject
he managed to finish the story in just six weeks.
Family members said he built the story in his head
while taking these really late walks of up to twenty
miles per night around London. Historians say Dickens wanted a
Christmas Carol to open readers' hearts to poverty stricken folks

(04:21):
just trying to survive, and to encourage charity from those
more well off. He also wanted to warn them about
the danger to society if they continued to tolerate the
suffering of the poor. Where did he get the inspiration
for the characters in a Christmas Carol? Well Some say
it's possible that Scrooge's name came from a gravestone Dickens

(04:41):
saw in Scotland, but the grave was actually for a
guy named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggey, whose job was recorded as
a meal man also known as a corn merchant, where
it is Dickens misread the inscription as a mean man,
and thus he was inspired to create the spooky old Man.
Now some scholars dispute that as a possible Dickens hoax

(05:04):
to publicize his story, but who knows. The book was
hugely successful, selling out its first edition of six thousand
copies by Christmas Eve, just five days from the day
they published it, and his new editions came out. It
kept selling, with eleven more editions in the first year alone.
Since then, the book has been issued over and over

(05:26):
and over again in hardback and paperback editions, translated into
over one hundred and fifty languages, and has never been
out of print. A Christmas Carol has been adapted a
ton of times for film, stage, opera, and other media too.
In eighteen forty nine, Dickens started doing public readings of
the story, which were so successful he did one hundred

(05:49):
and twenty seven more in the next twenty years until
his death in eighteen seventy The beauty of this story
is if you are passionate about something and you find
the best way to share share your passion, you never
know where it can take you. Hope your holidays have
been wonderful and I hope you're enjoying The Backstory with
Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new

(06:11):
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you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer

(06:34):
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
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at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The
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