The Dickens Sledgehammer that Forever Changed Christmas: The Cultural Phenomenon of A Christmas Carol
By James T. Summerhays

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Christmas wasn’t always such a massive worldwide phenomenon of merriment and conviviality. It once resembled something closer to a quiet Easter Sunday, with fathers and mothers leading children somberly to a sacred service. Two hundred years ago, Christmas passed without hardly a thought—the program may have been watched by some at a church or mass, but nothing unordinary was manifest in the homes of the people—only the normal ticking of time with the normal day’s labor.

Charles Dickens Senses His Mission

When Charles Dickens was writing, a massive social upheaval was taking place. Many in his day felt that the beauties of a pastoral and rustic country living, with its healthy and swarthy country-dwellers, was giving way to a cramped, pale, and alienating lifestyle in a London malodor. Everyone was fleeing to the cities it seemed. Industrialization was in full swing, and a sentimental Dickens noted that the intertwined and generous social constructs of farm life were being replaced by the cold-hearted and lonely demands of modern industry. Though we may not fully relate today, enjoying so many marvels of modern invention as we do, the beginnings of the industrial revolution caused great difficulty and social commotion.

In a recent and penetrating Christmas article in BYU Studies, “Culture Carol: Dickens’s Influence on LDS Christmas Fiction,” Rosalynde Frandsen Welch gives a startling context to what motivated Dickens to write:

In March 1843, Charles Dickens received a copy of the Second Report of the Children’s Employment Commission, the second part of a government investigation in the employment of children in mines and factories. The report was graphically illustrated with horrific images of naked children pulling coal carts twice their size to which they were chained, buried deep in mine shafts not even tall enough for the children to stand up straight….Dickens, along with his fellow middle-class Victorians, was properly shocked by the report’s revelation of misery and wrote on the same day that he was anxious to produce “a very cheap pamphlet called ‘An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.’” Four days later, his plan had changed: he would wait until the end of the year, and then “a Sledge hammer” would “come down with twenty times the force.” That sledgehammer was A Christmas Carol, which appeared in December of that year. (See BYU Studies Christmas themed edition, 40:3)

Dickens’s words seem prophetic to us today, but they truly are an understatement when considering what has occurred. The sledgehammer of which he spoke came down with much more force than twenty times. Though Dickens did hope to encourage societal changes and increase awareness of the plight of the poor, he could not have anticipated the overwhelming response to A Christmas Carol. The drama of a wondrously changed Ebenezer Scrooge and the poor but benevolent Crachit family pulled at the effectual heartstrings of English and American families everywhere.

The Carol has become more widely read and re-adapted to all forms of media than any other of his works. It was not merely a book to read, but a force for cultural change. Many scholars agree that it was the main driving force that transformed the Christmas holiday from a church service into a universal season of generosity, gift giving, and family tradition.

So, as we gather together with family and old friends, as we partake of the carols and the merriment, as we feast upon the hams and the casseroles, as we exchange affections with those whom we love, and see the magic in the eyes of children unwrapping gifts next to a glowing tree and crackling fire—we can thank Charles Dickens for establishing the tradition through the Carol.

Social Intent of Dickens

However, Dickens’s intention was not necessarily to affect the renewing of a national Christmas holiday; as Welch points out adeptly in her BYU Studies article, his intention was in the realm of social reforms that bring people together and benefit the poor. “Dickens wanted to begin with the most egregious of problems, of course, and in the world of the Carol that problem turns out to be the economic alienation dissolving human relationships at the levels of class, family, and individual. It has been remarked that one can be most alone in the midst of the largest crowd, and Ebenezer Scrooge is figurative proof of that irony.” This is part of the reason the themes in the Carol speak to us today—the alienation and cold loneliness of the modern materialist buy-and-sell culture leaves flesh-and-blood humans nostalgic for a day when we needed others so much more than things.

Dickens’s answer for this, Welch observes, is in the realm of personal virtue. “If economic problems cause social machinery to seize up, then love allows it to run smoothly, according to the Carol. Charity, in other words, can compensate for the alienating forces inherent in a capitalist economy.”

Dickens is challenging us through the Carol. He is calling to us to open our hearts in a show of magnanimous philanthropy. He calls to us from the dust to reach out to the beleaguered and struggling—let them sup with us at our tables; let the careworn feel of our open heart and generous visage; let our purses and pocketbooks open wide not only to our families, but also to the downtrodden of the earth in other countries. The Carol is a plea to take inventory of all things in our character that lead to alienation, and then stamp it out in full accord with the spirit of Christmas.

To get the full BYU Studies Christmas Issue, click here.

To download the full article by Rosalynde Frandsen Welch for free, click here.