A Christmas Carol
The Dickensian Darkness of 12 Christmas Classics - Day 1
“What’s your favorite Christmas movie?” is a common question each December, and studios and streamers operate like an assembly line of constant Christmas content. The Hallmark Channel keeps itself afloat by adding to the Letterboxd list “Christmas movie posters with white heterosexual couples wearing red and green” (274 entries and counting!). Yet with the quantity of Christmas movies, the quality of bona fide classics is sparse. In the last twenty-five years, I’m not certain I can get to two hands counting the number of Christmas films that will be cherished generations from now. The genre’s golden years are in the 40s, 80s, and 90s. The last few years as I’ve revisited my annual go-to’s, I’ve noticed a pattern and uniting theme within the subgenre. Now this isn’t unusual as it’s true for every genre by definition of the very word, but what struck me is the paradoxical nature of the theme of dark and melancholy for a supposedly merry and bright time. In 2022, I read Dickens’ seminal novella for the first time. I read it again last year and again this past week. I’ll likely read it every December until I am a Christmas spirit. Dickens’s influence on Anglo-American Christmas culture is no secret, and his stamp on the Christmas genre and its paradoxical melancholy mood is undeniable.
There is usually a foundational touchpoint for many genres and subgenres of storytelling—a story whose themes and tropes pave the way for subsequent entries. For high fantasy, it’s Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings; for science fiction, it’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I would suggest that to be inducted into the Christmas Canon, you must pay thematic homage to Mr. Dickens.
The themes of Christmas itself are, of course, historically rooted in the Christian faith and the celebration of Christ in the Advent season of the Church Calendar. It’s also true that Dickens heavily influenced the modern secular celebration and its themes of joy, hope, charity/love, family, and nostalgia. The icons and ephemera that spring to mind when thinking about the Christmas season find much of their foundation and beginnings in early nineteenth century Britain as conservative Tory party intellectuals desired a nostalgic recovery of past festivities. In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, Dickens scholar Michael Slater asserts, “(Dickens) was hugely influential, primarily as a result of the Carol’s tremendous and enduring popularity, in ensuring that a certain turn was given to the revival of traditional Christmas festivities that was already well under way in Britain during the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century. This turn involved emphasizing the concept of Christian charity.” (p. xii) So when that one agnostic kid in youth group tells everyone that Dickens, not Jesus, is the Reason for the Season, they are unfortunately partially correct. But, oh doubtful youth group delinquent, Dickens’s Christian faith permeated all of his writings, perhaps none moreso than A Christmas Carol. G.K. Chesterton wrote, “If ever there was a message full of what modern people call true Christianity, the direct appeal to the common heart, a faith that was simple, a hope that was infinite, and a charity that was omnivorous, if ever there came among men what they call the Christianity of Christ, it was in the message of Dickens.”
All this to say, the Christian faith influenced Dickens, who influenced the modern Anglo-American culture and celebration of Christmas. And A Christmas Carol’s fingerprints are all over the Christmas Movie Canon, in particular the melancholic mood of Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge is characterized by regrets, doubt, anger, isolation, loneliness, pessimism, greed, sadness, and selfishness. There is a real confrontation with death and despair that produces an opportunity for change and redemption into a character defined by the Christian fruit of love, joy, and hope. For the next eleven days, I will pick a classic from the Christmas Canon to demonstrate the influence of this Dickensian Darkness and the Christian redemption that leaves us merry and bright as the credits roll.
My Five Favorite Adaptations of A Christmas Carol:
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Scrooge (1951)
A Christmas Carol (1938)
Scrooged (1988)
Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)