Charley Dickens said, "My father was always at his best at
Christmas." Charles Dickens loved to celebrate Christmas.
His favorite time during the holidays was Twelfth Night, the feast of the
Epiphany.
Early in 1843, as a response to a government report on the abuse
of child laborers in mines and factories, Dickens vowed he would
strike a "sledge-hammer blow . . . on behalf of the Poor Man's Child."
That sledge-hammer was A Christmas Carol.
It only took Dickens about six weeks to write A Christmas Carol.
Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit helped speed up the process. When
Dickens wrote he "saw" his characters much like the way that young
Ebenezer Scrooge saw the characters from the books he had read.
As Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol he said that the Cratchits
were "ever tugging at his coat sleeve, as if impatient for him to get
back to his desk and continue the story of their lives".
"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail." This line
appears toward the beginning of the novel. Dickens included this
because of a dream. He had dreamt that one of his good friends
was pronounced to be "as dead Sir . . . as a door-nail".
The Cratchit family is based on Dickens'
childhood home life. He lived in poor
circumstances in a "two up two down" four roomed house which he shared
with his parents and five siblings. Like Peter Cratchit, young
Charles, the eldest boy, was often sent to pawn the family's goods
when money was tight. Like many poor families the Cratchit's had
nothing in which to roast meat. They relied on the ovens of their
local baker which were available on Sundays and Christmas when the
bakery was closed.
A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843.
Initially six thousand copies of the book were printed. More
copies were ordered after the first printing was sold in only five
days.
One literary critic called A Christmas Carol a "national
institution". Dickens' friend and fellow author,
William Makepeace Thackeray, was
quick to correct the critic and call the book a "national benefit".
At the time Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol Christmas wasn't commonly celebrated as a
festive holiday. In The Pickwick Papers and
A Christmas
Carol Dickens' descriptions of feasting, games and family unity combined
with his message that Christmas was a time "when want is keenly felt
and abundance rejoices" helped revive popular interest in many
Christmas traditions that are still practiced today.
In 1867 Dickens read A Christmas Carol at a public reading
in Chicago. One of the audience members , Mr. Fairbanks, was a
scale manufacturer. Mr. Fairbanks was so moved that he decided to "break
the custom we have hitherto observed of opening the works on Christmas
day." Not only did he close the factory on Christmas day, but he
gave Christmas turkeys to all of his employees.
