Back to: Dickens A Christmas Carol and the Bible
Scrooge goes to Fred’s home for Christmas dinner.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it:
‘Is your master at home, my dear.’ said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl. Very.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where is he, my love.’ said Scrooge.
‘He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I’ll show you up-stairs, if you please.’
‘Thank you. He knows me,’ said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. ‘I’ll go in here, my dear.’
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.
‘Fred.’ said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started. Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have done it, on any account.
‘Why bless my soul.’ cried Fred,’ who’s that.’
‘It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred.’
Let him in. It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness.
1. Scrooge as a changed man
This is the night Scrooge had seen with the Spirit of Christmas Present, and yet the former miser has in fact changed the future with his presence—a quiet statement on how much power is in such a simple thing as being there. Presence as much as Presents!
Here, Scrooge the changed man seems changed into Fred—as he enters the room full of the same hearty goodwill that Fred modeled earlier when he visited Scrooge, even having a similar startling effect on those already present
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late. That was the thing he had set his heart upon.
The next day he races to beat Cratchit to the office, and when the clerk arrives, Scrooge feigns anger about him being eighteen and a half minutes late. Cratchit was expecting as much, knowing nothing of his employer’s overnight conversion. Scrooge has good intentions this morning—he has decided to raise his clerk’s salary and to follow up with other generous acts—but he lacks some skill in expressing them. Cratchit’s customary reaction to Scrooge is apologetic and fearful, but when Scrooge leaps off his stool and gives him a good poke in the ribs, he becomes alarmed and fears the old miser has succumbed to lunacy. It turns out not to be lunacy; again, Scrooge’s newly released energies, like his newly acquired social impulses, make for some strange previously unwitnessed behaviors.
In England, the next morning was celebrated as Saint Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day, a day when an employer kindly rewarded his worker with a box of gifts. In accordance with the spirit of that day, Dickens has Scrooge raise Bob’s salary
In the final two paragraphs, the narrator reports that Scrooge was faithful to his pledge to renounce his old ways and live generously with goodwill for all. Tiny Tim does not die. He lives to bestow his famous blessing on the story and all its readers. The Christmas spirit has been triumphant.
And he did it; yes, he did. The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.
‘Hallo.’ growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. ‘What do you mean by coming here at this time of day.’
‘I am very sorry, sir,’ said Bob. ‘I am behind my time.’
‘You are.’ repeated Scrooge. ‘Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.’
‘It’s only once a year, sir,’ pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. ‘It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,’ said Scrooge,’ I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,’ he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again;’ and therefore I am about to raise your salary.’
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
‘A merry Christmas, Bob,’ said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. ‘A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit.’
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
2. Christmas Carol as a parable
Dickens nearly left out one of the most uplifting sentences in Carol, adding before printing that Tiny Tim did not die—giving the impression that it was the new Scrooge who saved the child
Dickens wishes his reader God’s blessing—which he surely hoped Carol was.
Twelve years after Carol’s publication, Dickens wrote to a friend an epilogue of sorts: “Scrooge is delighted to find that Bob Cratchit is enjoying his holiday in such a delightful situation; and he says (with that warmth of that nature which has distinguished him since his conversion) ‘Make the most of it, Bob; make the most of it
What does a twenty-first century reader make of this story? The ordeal of conversion is a real process, a serious achievement, and not an everyday event. How does it happen? Dickens assures us that Scrooge’s conversion was genuine and enduring, but he failed to convince Edmund Wilson, who writes:
Shall we ask what Scrooge would actually be like if we followed him beyond the frame of the story? Unquestionably he would relapse when the merriment was over—if not while it was still going on—into moroseness, vindictiveness, suspicion. He would . . . reveal himself as the victim of a manic-depressive cycle, and a very uncomfortable person. (Edmund Wilson Wound and Bow, 53)
But Dickens has given no more story to follow, and Wilson acknowledges in another section of the same essay that the figure of Scrooge is so embedded in our Christmas folklore that we forget to inquire into the mechanics of conversion. But the phenomenon of conversion was fundamental to Dickens; some form of it is present in most of his writing, and there is much about his use of it in Scrooge’s life that is interesting to consider.
The dramatization of Scrooge’s conversion has a magical quality about it that appears to avoid grappling with the psychological impediments and spiritual complexities of the process. Dickens readily acknowledged that he made use of the supernatural to expedite Scrooge’s passage along the way. A Christmas Carol was intended to be read by his first readers as a parable with a fully accessible message. It would have been natural to understand the story allegorically; that is, it was about