Based on an inspirational true story by Thomas J. Burns
which appeared in Reader’s Digest® Christmas issue 1989
It was late evening in London. A handsome young man with flowing brown hair and normally sparkling eyes, stepped from the brick-and-stone portico of his home near Regent’s Park. This evening he was deeply troubled. The cool air of dusk was a relief from the day’s unseasonal humidity as he began his routine walk through what he called “the black streets” of the old city.
The 31-year-old father of four had thought he was at the peak of his career. But just as the Christmas season was upon him, he was facing a serious loss of income. The news stunned him. It seemed his very talent was being questioned. He was supporting a large, extended family, and his expenses were already nearly more than he could handle. His father and brothers were pleading for loans. His wife was expecting their fifth child.
He had trouble sleeping so had taken to walking the streets at night, hoping it would somehow spark his usually prolific imagination. He needed an idea that would earn him a large sum of money, and he needed the idea quickly. But depression makes invention even more difficult.
The glow from street lamps lit his way through London’s better neighborhoods.
It all reminded him of the nightmare that often troubled his sleep: A 12-year-old boy sits at a worktable piled high with pots of black boot paste. For 12 hours a day, six days a week, he attaches labels on the endless stream of pots to earn the six shillings that will keep him alive.
The boy in the dream looks through the rotting warehouse floor into the cellar, where swarms of rats scurry about. Then he raises his eyes to the dirt-streaked window, seeing only London’s wintry fog. The window light fades along with the boy’s hopes.
This was no scene from his imagination. It was a period from his early life when his father was in debtor’s prison, and the youngster was receiving only an hour of school lessons during his dinner break at the warehouse. The boy feels helpless, abandoned. He fears he may never know joy or hope again. Fortunately, his father inherited a modest amount of money, enabling him to pay off his debts and get out of prison – thus was the boy able to escape a dreary fate.
Now the fear of being unable to pay his own debts haunted him. He was no closer to the idea he desperately needed. But in the midst of self-doubt, a man sometimes does his best work. From the storm of tribulation comes a gift.
As he neared his own home, Charles Dickens felt a sudden flash of inspiration. A Christmas story! One for the very people he passed on the bleak streets of London. People who lived and struggled with the same fears and longings he was feeling, people who hungered for a bit of cheer and hope.
Christmas, 1843, was less than three months away! Could he manage to write this story in so brief a time? The book would have to be short. It would have to be finished by the end of November to be printed and distributed in time for Christmas.
He recalled a theme of a very successful story which he had previously published, “The Pickwick Papers.” He would fill his Christmas story with scenes and characters he knew his readers already loved. The basic plot would be simple enough for children to understand, but evoke warm memories and emotions in the heart of an adult.
But what began as a desperate, calculated plan to rescue himself from debt – “a little scheme,” as he described it – soon began to work a change in Dickens’ own spirit. As he wrote about the kind of Christmas he loved – joyous family parties with clusters of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling; cheerful carols, games, dances and gifts; delicious feasts of roast goose, plum pudding, fresh breads, all enjoyed in front of a blazing Yule log – the joy of the season he cherished began to alleviate his depression.
After retiring alone to his cold, barren apartment on Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly London businessman, is visited by the spirit of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. Doomed by his greed and insensitivity to his fellow man when alive, Marley’s ghost wanders the world in chains forged of his own indifference. He warns Scrooge that he must change, or suffer the same fate.
A friend and Dickens’ future biographer, John Forster, took note of the “strange mastery” the story held over the author. Dickens told a professor in America how, when writing, he “Wept, and laughed, and wept again.” He even took charge of the design of the book, deciding on a gold-stamped cover, a red-and-green title page with colored endpapers, four hand-colored etchings, and four engraved woodcuts. To make the book affordable to the widest audience possible, he priced it at only five shillings.
As December rolled around, the manuscript went to printing. Barely one week before Christmas Eve, the author’s copies were delivered to him, and Dickens was delighted. He never doubted that “A Christmas Carol” would be popular. But neither he nor his publisher was ready for the overwhelming response... the first edition of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve! As the little book’s heartwarming message spread, Dickens later recalled, he received “By every post, all manner of strangers writing all manner of letters about their homes and hearths, and how the ‘Carol’ is read aloud there, and kept on a very little shelf by itself.” Thackeray said, “It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness.”
Because of the quality of production he demanded, and the low price he placed on the book, it did not turn into the immediate financial success Dickens hoped for. Nevertheless, “A Christmas Carol’s” enormous popularity revived his audience for subsequent novels, while giving a fresh, new direction to his life and career.
Although Dickens would write many other well-received and financially profitable books – David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations – nothing ever equaled the soul-satisfying joy he derived from his universally loved little novel. In time, some would call him the Apostle of Christmas.
At his death in 1870, a poor child in London was heard to ask: “Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?”
In a very real sense, Dickens popularized many aspects of the Christmas we celebrate today; family gatherings, seasonal drinks and dishes, and gift giving. Even our language has been enriched by the tale. Who has not known a “Scrooge,” or uttered “Bah! Humbug!” Even “Merry Christmas!” gained wider usage after the story was published.
And in the spirit of Tiny Tim, “A Merry Christmas to us all. God bless us, every one!”
Images courtesy Disney® and others unknown
