Following a visit from the ghost of his deceased business partner Jacob Marley, Scrooge receives nocturnal visits from three Ghosts of Christmas, each representing a different period in Scrooge's life. The Ghost of Christmas Present is concerned with Scrooge's current life and the present Christmas Day.[1]
The Ghost of Christmas Present is presented as a personification of the Christmas spirit,[2][3] and in the novella's first edition hand-coloured drawing by John Leech resembles early-Victorian images of Father Christmas. The spirit first appears to Scrooge on a throne made of traditional Christmas foodstuffs that would have been familiar to Dickens's more prosperous readers.[4][5]
The spirit becomes the mouthpiece for Dickens's view on social reform and Christian charity:[2][6] generosity and goodwill to all men – especially to the poor – and celebration of Christmas Day.[7]
Background
Dickens portrait by Margaret Gillies (1843), painted during the period when he was writing A Christmas Carol.
By early 1843 Dickens had been affected by the treatment of the poor and, in particular, the treatment of the children of the poor after witnessing children working in appalling conditions in a tin mine[8] and following a visit to a ragged school.[9] Indeed, Dickens experienced poverty as a boy when he was forced to work in a blacking factory after his father's imprisonment for debt. Originally intending to write a political pamphlet titled, An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, he changed his mind[10] and instead wrote A Christmas Carol[11] which voiced his social concerns about poverty and injustice.[12][13]
Dickens's friend and biographer John Forster said that Dickens had 'a hankering after ghosts', while not actually having a belief in them himself, and his journals Household Words and All the Year Round regularly featured ghost stories, with the novelist publishing an annual ghost story for some years after his first, A Christmas Carol, in 1843. In this novella, Dickens was innovative in making the existence of the supernatural a natural extension of the real world in which Scrooge and his contemporaries lived.[1] Dickens making the Christmas Spirits a central feature of his story is a reflection of the early-Victorian interest in the paranormal.[14]
The Ghost of Christmas Present is described as "a jolly Giant", and Leech's hand-coloured illustration of the friendly and cheerful Spirit, his hand open in a gesture of welcome confronted by the amazed Scrooge has been described by Jane Rabb Cohen as elegantly combining "the ideal, real, and supernatural" with humour and sympathy.[15] It is clear that the Spirit is based on Father Christmas, the ancient patriarchal figure associated with the English Christmas holiday, traditionally a bearded pagan giant depicted in a fur-lined evergreen robe wearing a crown of holly while holding mistletoe. Father Christmas, or Old Christmas, was often represented as surrounded by plentiful food and drink and started to appear regularly in illustrated magazines of the 1840s.[16]
The American Santa Claus commemorated in the 1822 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (better known as The Night Before Christmas) by Clement Clarke Moore is derived from his pagan English counterpart and the gift-giving Saint Nicholas of Myra, but the Ghost of Christmas Present should not be confused with the American version, who was little known in England before the early 1850s.[3]
As predicted by Jacob Marley, the second Spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, appears as the bell strikes one. While Scrooge is waiting to meet the second of the Spirits, 'nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much'. However, the appearance of the Spirit takes him by surprise, with its vision of opulence and the good things of Christmas, a vision of how Scrooge with all his wealth could be living, but chooses not to:[1][17]
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed...
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know me better, man!"
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and, though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!"
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple deep green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.[18]
Scrooge is more chastened in this Spirit's company than he was in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Past and expresses his willingness to learn from any lesson the Spirit will show him.[19] The Spirit takes Scrooge to the city streets with which Dickens himself was very familiar and which he paced each night while composing A Christmas Carol – 'past the areas of shabby genteel houses in Somers or Kentish Towns, watching the diners preparing or coming in'. Dickens incorporated these scenes into his novella.[14] In the original manuscript, the Spirit refers to "my oldest brother", a clear reference to Jesus Christ and the first Christmas, but Dickens erased this reference before publication as being irreverent.[20]
The Spirit shows Scrooge the joys and the hardships experienced by his fellow Man during one Christmas Day, that of the present,[1] taking Scrooge to a joyous market with people buying the makings of Christmas dinner; to celebrations of Christmas in a miner's cottage, a lighthouse, and at his nephew Fred's Christmas party. A major part of this stave is taken up with Bob Cratchit and his family, who, although poor, love each other and delight in each other's company. During the family feast, we are introduced to Cratchit's youngest son, Tiny Tim, who, despite his disability, remains full of Christian spirit and happiness.[21][22] The Spirit informs Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die unless the course of events changes, echoing Scrooge's own words he had earlier used to the two men who were collecting for charity, "If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."[18]
Scrooge notices that the Spirit
notwithstanding his gigantic size [is able to] accommodate himself to any place with ease ... He stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a super-natural creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
The Rev.Geoffrey Rowell has observed that the stooping of the Ghost of Christmas Present is a reflection of the New Testament's statement that God stooped down to be born in human form in the Incarnation at Bethlehem.[14]
Sabbath dinners of the poor
When the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge the dinners of the poor being cooked in a local bakery, the houses of the poor at that time being ill-equipped for cooking,[23][full citation needed] seeing the Spirit as representing God and Christianity Scrooge accuses him of wanting to close such bakeries on the Sabbath which would have resulted in the poor having no hot food that day.
The Sunday shuttering of businesses was of great importance to Dickens at that time: Several public figures wanted to keep the Sabbath holy by banning secular work on Sundays, which meant closing the bakeries. Among these Sabbatarians was the MPSirAndrew Agnew (1793–1849), who introduced a Sunday Observance Bill in the House of Commons four times between 1832 and 1837, none of which passed. It was Agnew's third attempt which drew on him the wrath of Dickens; Dickens' pamphlet in response[24] is largely a personal attack on Agnew, who wished to not only close the bakeries but also to limit other "innocent enjoyments" of people experiencing poverty. The passing of the Bill, had it been successful, would not have affected the hot meals or amusements of the better-off on Sundays. Dickens wrote,
"SirAndrew Agnew ... generally speaking, eat(s) pretty comfortable dinners all the week through, and cannot be expected to understand what people feel, who only have a meat dinner on one day out of seven."[24]
Dickens later supported the National Sunday League, which campaigned to relax Sunday restrictions further.[25]
In the novella, Scrooge points out to the Spirit that the actions of the Sabbatarians "...has been done in your name, or at least that of your family". This is a revealing comment, as it shows that God sent the Spirits for Scrooge's redemption and that Dickens, therefore, intended A Christmas Carol as a Christian allegory. In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples of Jesus pluck the heads off grain to eat as they walked by some fields. They are accused of breaking Sabbath rules concerning resting on the Sabbath because plucking the grain was considered food preparation. Jesus replied,
"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."[26]
Dickens himself professed to be a Christian, but it is hard to pigeonhole his faith into any particular sectarian branch of 19thcentury Christianity.[27] The Spirit responds:
There are some on this earth of yours ... who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.[27]
The Spirit's words point out to Scrooge that many hypocritically claim religious justification for their un-Christian actions, which adversely affect the lives of people experiencing poverty. He states that men should be judged by the morality of their deeds and not by the religious justification for them.[28]
Ignorance and Want
"Scrooge encounters Ignorance and Want", illustration (1843) John Leech.
The Spirit grows visibly older as his time with Scrooge passes, as he explains, "My life upon this globe, is very brief...it ends to-night...at midnight",[1] but before disappearing Scrooge observes two hideous and emaciated children – Ignorance and Want[19] – crouching beneath the robe of the Spirit.
"Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility.[18]
Dickens intends the two as a warning to Scrooge and Mankind of the consequences of ignoring the needs of the poor - and poor children in particular:
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's", said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"[18]
The Spirit thus reminds the reader that poverty is not a problem of the past or the future but also the present and mocks Scrooge's concern for their welfare before disappearing at midnight.
Dickens was to reiterate his warning about the treatment of people experiencing poverty in a speech he delivered at the Polytechnic Institute in Birmingham on 28February 1844, shortly after the publication of A Christmas Carol. In a metaphor taken from 'The Genii in the Bottle' from The Arabian Nights he said,
"Now, there is a spirit of great power, the Spirit of Ignorance, long shut up in a vessel of Obstinate Neglect, with a great deal of lead in its composition, and sealed with the seal of many, many Solomons, and which is exactly in the same position. Release it in time, and it will bless, restore, and reanimate society; but let it lie under the rolling waves of years, and its blind revenge at last will be destruction."[29][30]
↑ When it is not referred to as "it", it is referred to as "he".
Related Research Articles
A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol is a 1962 animated musical holiday television special produced by UPA. It is an adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, and it features UPA's character Mr. Magoo as Ebenezer Scrooge. The special first aired on December 18, 1962, on NBC and was the first animated Christmas special to be produced specifically for television.
Ebenezer Scrooge is the protagonist of Charles Dickens's 1843 short novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novella, Scrooge is a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas. The tale of his redemption by three spirits has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday in the English-speaking world.
Scrooge is a 1951 British Christmas fantasy drama film and an adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843). It stars Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, and was produced and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, with a screenplay by Noel Langley.
A Christmas Carol is a 1938 American drama film adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella of the same name, starring Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who learns the error of his ways on Christmas Eve after visitations by three spirits. The film was directed by Edwin L. Marin from a script by Hugo Butler.
Jacob Marley is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, a former business partner of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who has been dead for seven years. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance of redemption to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits, in the hope that he will mend his ways; otherwise, he will be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.
Christmas Carol: The Movie is a 2001 British live action/animated film based on Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, the film features the voices of numerous actors including Simon Callow, Kate Winslet, Kate's sister Beth Winslet, and Nicolas Cage. The film was a critical and commercial failure upon release.
A Christmas Carol is a British-American animated adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella. The film was broadcast on U.S. television by ABC on December 21, 1971, and released theatrically soon after. In 1972, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The film notably has Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern reprising their respective roles as Ebenezer Scrooge and Marley's ghost.
A Christmas Carol is a 1984 British-American made-for-television film adaptation of Charles Dickens' famous 1843 novella of the same name. The film was directed by Clive Donner, who had been an editor of the 1951 film Scrooge, and stars George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge, featuring Frank Finlay as Marley's ghost, David Warner as Bob Cratchit, Susannah York as Mrs. Cratchit, Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Roger Rees as Scrooge's nephew; he also serves as narrator, reading portions of Charles Dickens' words at the beginning and end of the film. It was filmed in the historic medieval county town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire.
Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol is an eight-minute animated film produced by Warner Bros. Television and DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, and aired on CBS on November 27, 1979 as the first segment of the Christmas special, Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales.
A Christmas Carol: The Musical is a 2004 American musical television film based on the 1994 stage musical inspired by the 1843 novella of the same name by Charles Dickens, by Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens.
The Ghost of Christmas Past is a fictional character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The Ghost is one of three spirits that appear to miser Ebenezer Scrooge to offer him a chance of redemption.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The Ghost is the last of the three spirits that appear to miser Ebenezer Scrooge to offer him a chance of redemption.
A Christmas Carol is a 1999 British-American made-for-television film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol that was first televised December 5, 1999, on TNT. It was directed by David Jones and stars Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge and Richard E. Grant as Bob Cratchit.
A Christmas Carol, the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens (1812–1870), is one of the English author's best-known works. It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy miser who hates Christmas, but is transformed into a caring, kindly person through the visitations of four ghosts. The classic work has been dramatised and adapted countless times for virtually every medium and performance genre, and new versions appear regularly.
A Christmas Carol is an Australian made-for-television animated Christmas fantasy film from Burbank Films Australia as part of the studio's series of Charles Dickens adaptations from 1982 to 1985. It was originally broadcast in 1982 through the Australian Nine Network. Based on Charles Dickens' classic 1843 English story, A Christmas Carol, the adaptation by Alexander Buzo was produced by Eddy Graham and directed by Jean Tych.
Scrooge is a 1935 British Christmas fantasy film directed by Henry Edwards and starring Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop and Robert Cochran. The film was released by Twickenham Film Studios and has since entered the public domain. It was the first sound film of feature length to adapt the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol, and it was the second cinematic adaptation of the story to use sound, following a now-lost 1928 short subject adaptation of the story. Hicks stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser who hates Christmas and is visited by a succession of ghosts on Christmas Eve. Hicks had previously played the role of Scrooge on the stage regularly, starting in 1901, and in a 1913 British silent film version.
Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost is a 1901 British short silent drama film, directed by Walter R. Booth, featuring the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge confronted by Jacob Marley's ghost and given visions of Christmas past, present, and future. It is the earliest film adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol is a 2020 British Christmas drama dance film directed by Jacqui Morris and David Morris and based on Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. It features the voices of Simon Russell Beale, Siân Phillips, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman and Leslie Caron. It received mixed reviews from critics.
A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future is a play in three acts by Edward Stirling at the Adelphi Theatre in London on 5 February 1844. Containing songs especially written for the show, the drama was adapted from the novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens which had been published just weeks before in December 1843. By February 1844 eight other adaptations had already appeared on the London stage, including A Christmas Carol, or, the Miser's Warning! by C. Z. Barnett, which had opened at the Surrey Theatre in February 1844. Stirling's version, however, was the only production to be sanctioned by Dickens, who gave permission for the adaptation in January 1844.
↑ Cohen, Jane Rabb. "The Illustrators of the Christmas Books, John Leech." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980. Pp. 141-151
↑ Roud, Steve (2006). The English Year, London: Penguin Books. pp. 385–387. ISBN978-0-140-51554-1
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
