What then is truly Christian in A Christmas Carol? In the end, Scrooge is reformed but not saved.
These are the things that “give him so much happiness.” But Dickens moves us quickly on to watch Scrooge walking the streets of the city, patting the children on their heads, talking to beggars, and watching the common people. as giddy as a drunken man,” and he takes delight in everything from his bed curtains to the lusty ringing of the church bells around him.īut did you remember that one of his first activities of the day was, as Dickens records it, “He went to church”? Oh, how good it would beto think that Scrooge heard the Gospel there, and took it to heart, and rejoiced above all things, in Jesus Christ, his Savior. Before his ordeal, he found joy in nothing. Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man. “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Does he turn to God and ask forgiveness? No, he turns to the “Spirit” and pleads for a chance to change his life and make amends.
He is, we can assume, genuinely remorseful, or at least terrified at the thought of dying as the miserable scoundrel that he has become. When Scrooge finally falls to his knees at his own tombstone, he is a broken man. “Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” Do we see our own sinfulness in Scrooge? Or do we see him as evil and ourselves as good in comparison? That, we are led to believe, is all there is to Christianity. All we are allowed to see is his so-called goodness. Is Jesus only a good person who helps poor people in their physical needs? Where is the Savior from sin?ĭickens never allows Tim to speak that Gospel message. Bob Cratchit tells his wife, “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”
Tiny Tim is the very picture of innocence and purity, the teacher of the Christian way. It judges people as either good or bad with no apparent regard for whether they trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness or not. Simply put, Charles Dickens was a preacher of social reform.ĭickens’s portrayal of Christianity is very common but, nevertheless, very false. And it seemed to Dickens that there was so much to be done. The rich often did little to help those in need.
Poor children were uneducated and doomed to a life of want. But his writing quite often reflected what he thought about how Christianity was practiced in his day. However, what is most important for every Christian is the following question: Does the Gospel even make an appearance in A Christmas Carol?Ĭharles Dickens did not claim to be a preacher of the Gospel. A Christmas Carol is, after all, a demonstration in story form of what kind of spirit should be alive and active in each and every Christian, especially at Christmastime. Every year the crotchety old Ebenezer Scrooge, whose best response to Christmas is “Bah! Humbug!” goes through the most frightening and revealing past, present, and future scenes of his otherwise pitiful existence and, having lived through it all, has a dramatic change of heart and is wonderfully transformed into “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old City knew.” And when all is said and done, little Tiny Tim has yet one more thing to say to top it all off: “God bless us, every one!”īut what is the “spirit of Christmas” anyway? Charles Dickens himself might argue that the essential “spirit” is the “Christian” spirit. It’s just not Christmas without A Christmas Carol.
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