When Christmas Went Viral

Summary

Throughline: When Christmas Went Viral

NPR’s Throughline, hosted by Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, takes listeners on a historical journey to explore the profound impact of Charles Dickens’s iconic novella, A Christmas Carol, on modern Christmas celebrations. Released on December 12, 2024, this episode delves deep into how a single literary work transformed societal perceptions and traditions surrounding the holiday season.

1. Setting the Stage: A Dickensian Introduction

The episode opens with a dramatic reading from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, immersing listeners in the bleak Victorian London where Ebenezer Scrooge embodies the quintessential miser. This vivid portrayal sets the foundation for understanding the societal conditions that inspired Dickens’s work.

Notable Quote:

Charles Dickens (00:00): “Once upon a time of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house.”

2. Charles Dickens: The Man Behind the Carol

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, a historian of Victorian England and Dickens’s great-great-great-granddaughter, provides insightful commentary on Dickens's life. She emphasizes his early experiences with poverty and deprivation, particularly the traumatic event when his father was imprisoned for debt, forcing young Dickens to work in a factory.

Notable Quote:

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley (05:23): “The Dickens family embraced a festive Christmas. For many people, though, Christmas was almost a day like any other day of the year.”

3. From Factory Floors to Literary Fame

After his family's financial downfall, Dickens’s determination to escape factory life led him to journalism and subsequently to writing fiction. His early works, published under the pen name "Boz," provided sharp, observational snapshots of London’s daily life, earning him widespread acclaim.

Notable Quote:

Charles Dickens (10:02): “When the railways first started, there are reports of people feeling that they just were unable to take the speed…”

4. The Birth of A Christmas Carol

Facing financial difficulties, Dickens poured his personal struggles and societal observations into A Christmas Carol. The novella, completed in six weeks, was both a creative outlet and a commercial venture aimed at addressing the rampant poverty and social injustices of his time.

Notable Quote:

Charles Dickens (28:24): “Once upon a time. Of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house.”

5. The Novel’s Immediate Impact

Upon its release in 1843, A Christmas Carol was an instant sensation. Dickens personally invested in publishing 6,000 copies, which sold out rapidly. The story’s powerful message resonated deeply, leading to widespread adoption of its themes in Christmas celebrations worldwide.

Notable Quote:

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley (42:16): “When A Christmas Carol came out in 1843, it was a sensation.”

6. Transforming Christmas Traditions

Dickens's narrative introduced the true spirit of Christmas—emphasizing family, generosity, and social responsibility. Elements such as the Christmas turkey, family gatherings, and charitable giving gained popularity, largely influenced by the novella’s depiction of the Cratchit family’s warmth despite their poverty.

Notable Quote:

Charles Dickens (36:40): “God bless us, everyone,” said Tiny Tim.

7. Dickens's Skepticism and Lasting Legacy

Despite the novella’s success, Dickens remained critical of superficial Christmas celebrations that did not address underlying social issues. He advocated for continuous social reform beyond the festive season, a sentiment echoed by his descendants today.

Notable Quote:

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley (47:34): “Nothing was ever enough for Dickens. He was a campaigner all his life.”

8. Modern-Day Reflections and Relevance

The episode concludes by drawing parallels between Dickens’s Scrooge and contemporary societal challenges like child poverty and economic inequality. Hawksley reflects on how A Christmas Carol remains relevant, urging individuals to embody the spirit of generosity and social responsibility depicted in the story.

Notable Quote:

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley (50:12): “Ebenezer Scrooge is absolutely alive and kicking in many areas of the world. There is still a huge amount of child poverty. There's so much inequality of wealth.”

Conclusion: A Timeless Legacy

When Christmas Went Viral effectively illustrates how Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol not only redefined a holiday but also instilled enduring values of compassion and social consciousness. Through rich storytelling and expert analysis, Throughline offers a comprehensive understanding of the novella’s historical context and its lasting influence on Christmas traditions around the globe.

Notable Quote:

Charles Dickens (50:52): “We should become more familiar with our own past because the past has things to teach us.”

This episode serves as a poignant reminder of literature’s power to inspire societal change, encouraging listeners to reflect on their own roles in fostering a more generous and equitable world.

Transcript

[Ramtin Arablouei]

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[Rund Abdelfatah]

Before we get back to the show, the end of another year is coming up and our team is looking back at all the great stories we've been able to bring you in 2024 because of your support. We explored everything from the basis of the constitutional amendments to the science and politics of smell to the history of the conflict in the Middle East. And it's because of listeners like you who step up to support our work either by giving to your local station or by joining npr. If you don't know what I'm talking about, NPR is a great way to support the independent public media you rely on from npr. When you sign up for a simple recurring donation, you support our mission of creating a more informed public and you get special perks from more than 25 NPR podcasts like sponsor free listening, bonus episodes and even exclusive discounted items from the NPR Shop and the NPR Wine Club. By donating now, you'll fund NPR's award winning journalism across the country and around the world. Join us on the plus side [e-mail] thank you. And now onto the show.

[Charles Dickens]

Once upon a time of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy with and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.

[Narrator]

The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. The door of Scrooge's counting house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, in a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank, was cop letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal, but he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal box in his own room, wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle.

[Charles Dickens]

Merry Christmas, Uncle. God save you.

[Narrator]

Cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. Bah, Said Scrooge.

[Charles Dickens]

Humbug Christmas.

[Narrator]

A humbug Uncle Said Scrooge's nephew.

[Charles Dickens]

You don't mean that. I'm sure I do, said Scrooge. Merry Christmas. What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

[Narrator]

Come then, returned the nephew gaily, what.

[Charles Dickens]

A right have you to be so dismal. What right have you to be so morose? You're rich enough.

[Narrator]

Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of this moment, said, bah again.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Bah.

[Narrator]

And followed it up with humbug. Don't be cross, uncle, said the nephew.

[Charles Dickens]

What else can I be, returned the uncle, when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas. Out upon. Merry Christmas. What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older but not an hour richer. A time for balancing your books and having every item in em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you. If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with the steak of holly through his heart.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Tis the season to be jolly.

[Narrator]

FA la la la la la la la la.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Merry Christmas, everybody.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

I know you've probably seen a version of A Christmas Carol. Since Charles Dickens first wrote it in 1843, there have been hundreds of adaptations, each one with its own twist. My personal favorites.

[Narrator]

Good morning, Mr. Duck.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Bah, humduck. A Looney Tunes Christmas.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And hello, welcome to the Muppet Christmas Carol.

[Charles Dickens]

My name is Charles Dickens. And my name is Rizzo the Rat.

[Narrator]

Hey, wait a second. You're not Charles Dickens.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I am, too.

[Charles Dickens]

No.

[Narrator]

A blue, furry Charles Dickens who hangs.

[Charles Dickens]

Out with a rat. Absolutely.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

The basic story goes, it's Christmas Eve and a miserly old man named Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts who take him into the past, present and future to teach him the value of kindness and generosity. The true spirit of Christmas. The book was an overnight sensation, and Charles Dickens, already famous, became a legend.

[Charles Dickens]

Some people would consider him the originator of Christmas, or the inventor of Christmas.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Leon Litbach. He's a professor of Victorian Studies at Queen's University in Belfast and editor of the Charles Dickens Letters Project.

[Charles Dickens]

There's a famous story that goes. A journalist at the end of the 19th century, after Dickens had died, went to Coventry Garden Market, and he encountered there a small girl who was selling fruits and vegetables, probably illiterate. And he said to her, well, Charles Dickens has died. And she says, oh, will Father Christmas die too?

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Before A Christmas Carol. The holiday wasn't as widely celebrated as it is today. Many people didn't even get the day off work. Dickens had already devoted his life to documenting urban London's harsh realities. Dickensian has become a catch all word for that world, a world of unfair working conditions, meager wages, homeless families and hungry children.

[Charles Dickens]

I think that even more than Christmas, Dickens is well known for his championship.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Of social issues, and he wrote a novel to represent what he saw. But of course, as the book's fame spread from England to the US and around the world, Christmas took on a life of its own, a very different one than what Dickens might have imagined.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

When Jingle Bells starts playing in department stores pretty much as soon as the clock strikes midnight on Halloween.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

The soundtrack to a season of spending.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I am the ghost of Christmas Past.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

And I'm Rund Abdelfatah. Coming up, how a Christmas Carol Changed Christmas.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Rob from Yonkers, New York.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

You're listening to Throughline on npr.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

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[Charles Dickens]

1 Great Expectations.

[Narrator]

My teacher at primary school, she said to the class, does anybod heard of Charles Dickens? And I thought it was some weird joke being played on me by my parents or something.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

This is Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, a historian of Victorian England, author of a number of books about Dickens and Christmas and Charles Dickens great great great granddaughter.

[Narrator]

I knew that he'd written Christmas Carol and I knew about Oliver Twist. But I think when you're that little, you don't necessarily realize that that means that other people know who they are.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Today, she's our ghost of Christmas past. And our first stop is the year 1812.

[Charles Dickens]

The Marquis and Marchioness Camden gave a magnificent ball in supper at their seat in Kent.

[Narrator]

It was always reported in the newspapers here what the royals had given each other for Christmas. Which duchesses had the most lavish parties.

[Charles Dickens]

The preparations displayed uncommon taste and consisted of the usual brilliancy of light.

[Narrator]

What people were wearing, what people were eating.

[Charles Dickens]

About one o'clock the company supped. At half past four, the party broke up.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Charles Dickens would have been way too young to appreciate all the gossip. He was just 10 months old. This was his very first Christmas.

[Narrator]

He had one older sister, Frances, but he was the oldest boy.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

His father, John, and his mother Elizabeth loved Christmas and each other.

[Narrator]

It was a very loving marriage, but they were both fairly irresponsible, particularly John, when it came to money.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

But they made sure to fill their home with the one thing that was virtually free. Music.

[Narrator]

One Christmas, they postponed their Christmas party because they'd just moved house and shock, horror. The piano hadn't yet been delivered, so the party couldn't possibly happen.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The Dickens family embraced a festive Christmas. For many people, though, Christmas was almost.

[Charles Dickens]

A day like any other day of the year.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The average person in Britain didn't even have the day off work.

[Charles Dickens]

You might have gone to church for a church celebration, but that was really about the height of it.

[Narrator]

There is, however, mistletoe and if two.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

People found themselves under one, they were meant to kiss.

[Narrator]

Some people banned that in their houses because it was all associated with paganism.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Keep in mind one reason December 25th may have been chosen as Christmas Day was to coincide with the winter solstice, a pagan tradition.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

At this time, the world itself seemed to be changing meaning at lightning speed. New machines were transforming everything about how people lived and worked.

[Charles Dickens]

When the railways first started, there are reports of people feeling that they just were unable to take the speed, which was far beyond the speed that they could travel on foot or by horse. How rapidly society was changing. You had a greater emphasis on commerce. Business was thriving.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Steam power might have made the trains run, but all that commerce and business required a lot of manpower too. Though it wasn't just men working in the factories, women and children were also keeping the machines running. They worked 12 hour days under harsh conditions and were at the mercy of their employer. Labor was the heartbeat of the Industrial Revolution and profit was Its king.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

The key of the house was sent back to the landlord who was very glad to get it. And I was handed over as a lodger to a reduced old lady long known to our family.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

This wasn't theoretical for young Charles Dickens. One day in 1824, his father, Short on money and having racked up a mountain of debt, was suddenly taken away to debtors prison. Charles was just 12 years old.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I was so young and childish and so little qualified. How could I be otherwise to undertake the whole charge of my own existence?

[Narrator]

I think he realized quite early on that his parents didn't have a great sense of responsibility when it came to making sure that their children had enough to eat and clothes to wear and everything else.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Dickens later wrote about this experience.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

When I had no money, I took a turn in Covent Garden market and stared at the pineapples.

[Narrator]

Initially it was just his father who went into the prison cell. But then his mother couldn't afford to pay rent for them, so she and her younger children all had to move into the prison cell because they didn't have anywhere else to go.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Wow.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

As for Charles, they couldn't afford to.

[Narrator]

Pay his school fees. He was told that he had to leave school. So Charles Dickens ended up in a factory. A factory that produced a liquid called blacking. And it was used for things like coach hoods and boots and front steps, anything that needed a. A black colour to it. And he obviously thought he was never going to get to have the kind of life that he wanted.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I know that I worked from morning to night with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I have lounged about the streets insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Newspapers and magazines were beginning to be mass printed and becoming more widely affordable, which meant that they needed writers. And Dickens was determined to never end up back in a factory. So in the late 1820s he decided to pursue a career in journalism, became.

[Narrator]

A freelance journalist, taught himself shorthand and started looking for work.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

His journalism looked at every level of the world around him. Cab drivers and slum dwellers, bachelors and boarding houses, parliament in the courts, hospital, patients and prisoners. And while working as a reporter, he.

[Narrator]

Started writing short stories. And these were his first works of fiction.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

He'd published them anonymously.

[Narrator]

So what you would do at the time if you wanted to be published, you would put them through the door of A magazine and hope that they would publish them for free, just so you could see your words in print.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

His pen name was Baz.

[Narrator]

That was the nickname of his youngest brother Augustus.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And that collection of stories came to be known as Sketches by Boz. They gave snapshots of daily life in London and they were a hit.

[Narrator]

His stories were just very simple, often very funny, sometimes very sad.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking, like an overweening predilection for brandy and water. It is a misfortune into which a man easily falls and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extricate himself a little bit.

[Narrator]

Like stand up comedians do observational comedy today where they pick up on a small element of something and it's something that everybody can identify with and go, oh, I know someone who does that. Well, I've been in that situation myself. So it spoke to the people in general.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And pretty soon he was commissioned to work on the Pickwick Papers, his very first novel.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass and then fairly turned his back and we will not say fled, firstly because it is an ignoble term and secondly because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat.

[Narrator]

And then he wrote Oliver Twist.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

The boy was lying fast asleep on a rude bed upon the floor so pale with anxiety and sadness and the closeness of his prison that he looked.

[Narrator]

Like death and Nicholas Nickleby.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Eventually he started publishing under his real name. And before he'd reached the age of 30, people all across the world began to know Charles Dickens.

[Narrator]

He just became incredibly famous. One of the things that made Dickens more popular than other writers was that his works dealt not just with the upper classes, which is what most authors of that time had done. And what Dickens did was he wrote about everybody, from aristocracy down to street sweepers and everybody could identify with him.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

There is one broad sky over all the world and whether it be blue or cloudy, the same heaven beyond.

[Charles Dickens]

There's a very famous painting of Dickens on quite a plush upholstered chair and he is sitting at a table and he's got very long flowing dark colored hair and he has this youthful appearance. He wears a gold tie pin and he looks fabulously impressive and wealthy.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Because of new mass printing machines, paintings like this one could be engraved, reproduced by the thousands, and then could be.

[Charles Dickens]

Circulated around the world and people would become familiar with the image, the visual image of a person.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Dickens stories and his face were especially popular in the U.S. so in 1842, he set off on a ship with.

[Narrator]

Very, very high hopes, expecting that he was going to absolutely love it.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

No visitor can ever have set foot on those shores with a stronger faith in the Republic than I had when I landed in America.

[Charles Dickens]

And he thought that this great American experiment could yield lessons for the rest of the world, particularly the United Kingdom. However, what he found was not quite to his liking.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

All that is loathsome, drooping, decayed, is here.

[Charles Dickens]

He found, unfortunately, that there was too great an emphasis on materialism, too great an emphasis on the love of money.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

And too great an obsession with celebrity.

[Narrator]

He was followed down the streets with people wanting to cut off locks of his hair.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Once, on a boat traveling the Great Lakes, he awoke to a, quote, party of gentlemen peering through his cabin window.

[Charles Dickens]

He found the manners of the Americans to be appalling.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

There was actually a lot he found appalling.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Underhanded tamperings with public officers, cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields and hired pens for daggers.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

On one stop, he visited a prison.

[Narrator]

Outside Philadelphia, and he was absolutely horrified to see that black people and white people were treated completely differently, even though they were all in prison.

[Charles Dickens]

He also traveled to the American south and was appalled by slavery.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Now, I appeal to every, every human mind imbued with the commonest of common sense and the commonest of common humanity, and ask, can they have a doubt of the real condition of the slave? Or can they for a moment make a compromise between the institution or any of its flagrant fearful features and their own just consciences?

[Narrator]

They got as far as Richmond, Virginia, and they were on a train, and there were two slave owners bartering over a family. And Dickens's listened to the crying as the father was taken away. So the father was in one train carriage waiting to leave the rest of his family. His wife and children were in another train. He wrote very poignantly that he was grateful that he had not been a baby in a slave rocked cradle, which is a line that still gets to me every time.

[Charles Dickens]

He said in a letter to his friend back home, it is not the.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Republic of my imagination.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

On top of all of that, he wasn't even making much money in the US because his work was being pirated left and right. And when he got back to London, he decided to write down his observations in a book called American Notes. Americans hated it. And then his next novel kind of.

[Narrator]

Tanked, and his publishers started to think that this was, you know, maybe, maybe he wasn't such a good bet after all.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

He had a wife and four kids by this point, with another one on the way, and was on the verge of falling into debt. The thing that haunted him most from his childhood. He desperately needed a new idea to get him out of the red.

[Narrator]

So he was struggling. And that was one of the things that would have been feeding his own anxiety, his fear of his own children ending up as he and his siblings had done.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

With the memories of his childhood replaying in his mind, Dickens found himself coming back to one Christmas. It had always been a special time for his family, despite all the hardships they faced. Coming up, Charles Dickens dreams up a Christmas carol.

[Narrator]

Hi, my name is Jesse. I live in Santa Cruz, La Laguna of Guatemala. And you're listening to through line from npr.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

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[Charles Dickens]

A Tale of TWO Cities.

[Narrator]

I'm a trapper in the Gorber Pit. It does not tire me, but I have to trap without a light and I'm scared. I go at four and sometimes half past three in the morning and come out at five and half past. I never go to sleep. I would like to be at school far better than in the pit.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Sarah Gooder, aged eight years back in London after his trip to the US and contemplating what his next book should be about. Dickens was sent a parliamentary report that he couldn't get out of his mind. People had been collecting hundreds of tests, testimonials from children working in Great Britain's mines and factories. It's said that Dickens wept when he read them.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Isabella Reed, 12 years.

[Narrator]

I have to stoop much and creep through the water, which is frequently up to the calves of my legs. When the weather is warm, there is difficulty in breathing and frequently the lights go out. And then he thought, well, who's going to read this? So he did what he could do best, which was to turn it into a work of fiction.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

He started thinking about how.

[Narrator]

Dickens was very insomniac for much of his life, so a lot of his thinking was done walking around.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Dickens would walk the streets of London for hours at night, thinking it was.

[Narrator]

The biggest city in the world. There were people of all classes from all over the world.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

A London that was in the grips of what are now known as the Hungry forties.

[Narrator]

There were famines starting. The big Irish famine hadn't quite happened, but there were early signs of what would come and many, many migrants were coming from Ireland to England, a kind of migrant crisis. It was absolutely over crowded.

[Charles Dickens]

In this society where things are allowed to progress without controls, without those kinds of social nets in which to catch the people who happen to fall through. What you're leaving behind is a trail of destitution.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

On his walks, Dickens would have seen people living on the street, streets that were filled with horse manure and human waste.

[Charles Dickens]

London did not have a proper sewer system, sanitation system until the 1850s.

[Narrator]

It wouldn't have smelt good and he.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Would have known to avoid certain areas.

[Narrator]

I read one account with an Aryan and his Seven Dials, one of the worst slums at the time. And it was said that if you went there and you weren't from there, you could expect to get your throat cut. It was a very violent society.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

He would have seen children without shoes, with holes in their clothes, shivering in the chilly autumn air.

[Narrator]

Children were just treated worse than animals, you know, they were hit. Working class children were often considered kind of just expendable.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The days were dark and cold and.

[Narrator]

Of course there's only so many coins you can give out, so many individuals you can help.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And the more Dickens saw on his walks, the more riled up he got. A story was forming in his mind.

[Narrator]

What he called a. That would strike a sledgehammer blow on behalf of the poor man's child.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Unfortunately, his publishers weren't as enthusiastic about this new Christmas book.

[Narrator]

They thought it was a very uncommercial.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Idea, but Dickens was willing to take the gamble.

[Narrator]

It's almost like he was possessed with this desire to get this story out there, just get those feelings into it, this feeling of his anger with the world.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

So he began to write.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Once upon a time. Of all the good days in the year. On Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house.

[Narrator]

The story of A Christmas Carol opens on Christmas Eve and we see Ebenezer Scrooge, who's in his counting house, so his place of work. He lends money to people and he's part of his firm, known as Scrooge and Marley. And what we learn is that it's seven years to that day since Jacob Marley died.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

[Charles Dickens]

Dead as a doornail, says Dickens.

[Narrator]

And Jacob Marley was just like Scrooge.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.

[Narrator]

Didn't care about anybody, had a lot of money and was a miser.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw Marley's face.

[Narrator]

The ghost of Jacob Marley comes to Ebenezer Scrooge.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

What do you want with me? Said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. Much Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

[Narrator]

And Scrooge kind of dismisses it. He refuses to believe in ghosts.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

You don't believe in me, observed the ghost. I don't, said Scrooge.

[Charles Dickens]

Jacob Marley warns him, no rest, no peace.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Incessant torture of remorse.

[Narrator]

Forced to walk the earth wrapped in these chains, chains and cash boxes, the sign of the money. All his life he's been accruing, what can he do with it in the next life? And he tells him that he will be visited by three ghosts of Christmas.

[Charles Dickens]

Each of which will teach him an important lesson.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls one Christmas. Expect the second on the next night.

[Charles Dickens]

At the same hour.

[Narrator]

Christmas present the third upon the next.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Night, when the last stroke of 12 has ceased to vibrate and Christmas yet.

[Narrator]

To come, often called Christmas Future in adaptations.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I trade.

[Narrator]

Scrooge says, no, I don't really want that to happen, thanks very much. But of course it does happen.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside and Scrooge, starting up into a half recumbent attitude, found himself face to face, face with the unearthly visitor who drew them. Are you the spirit whose coming was Foretold to me? Asked Scrooge. I am. Who and what are you? Scrooge demanded. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Long past? Inquired Scrooge. No, you're past.

[Narrator]

And he gets taken back to his own childhood by the first ghost.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Good heaven, said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked about him. I was bred in this place. I was a boy here. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts and hopes and joys and cares long, long forgotten.

[Charles Dickens]

And teaches him that in his past, Scrooge celebrated Christmas much more fully.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs. All these boys were in great spirit and shouted to each other until the broad fields were so full of merry music that the crisp air laughed to hear it. The school is not quite deserted, said the ghost.

[Charles Dickens]

He's also given the opportunity to visit himself as a schoolboy.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

A solid creature neglected by his friends. Scrooge said. He knew it. And he sobbed.

[Charles Dickens]

He's kind of lonely and destitute. And I think that that also is a kind of autobiographical reflection on something within Dickens. As Scrooge grew into an adult, he began to evolve into a miser.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a morning dress, in whose eyes.

[Charles Dickens]

There was tears which upset his love interest.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

You fear the world too much, she answered gently. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one until the master passion gain engrosses you. Have I not? She left him and they parted.

[Charles Dickens]

And he's left at the end of the Ghost of Christmas Past visit, disturbed by what he has found and what he's turned into.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

No more. Cried Scrooge. No more. I don't wish to see it. Show me no more.

[Charles Dickens]

I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me.

[Narrator]

Second ghost is the Ghost of Christmas Present, which, of course, is the Ghost of Christmas 1843.

[Charles Dickens]

He's a much more jolly kind of spirit, and his job is to show Scrooge how Christmas is celebrated in his own time.

[Narrator]

Well, he could be enjoying.

[Charles Dickens]

And so he takes him, for example, to different parts of the world, to light houses and mines and various other places where Christmas is celebrated.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit and crunch. All vanished instantly.

[Charles Dickens]

He also takes Scrooge to the residence of Bob Cratchit. Bob Cratchit is Scrooge's Clerk who works for a merry meager wage.

[Narrator]

Scrooge is reluctant to give Bob Cratchit any time off at Christmas.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

What has ever got your precious father, then? Said Mrs. Cratchit. And your brother, Tiny Tim and Martha weren't as late last Christmas Day by half an hour.

[Charles Dickens]

And so he's part of the working poor of. Of which there were many, of course, in Victorian London.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Here's Martha, Mother. Cried the two young Cratchits.

[Narrator]

We see Martha coming home from work and all the family being around the table together.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

These young Cratchits danced about the table and in came little Bob, the father, and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim. He bore a little crutch and had his limbs supported by an iron frame. And how did Little tim behave? Asked Mrs. Cratchit. Oh, as good as gold, said Bob, and better. 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. Chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed a Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us. Which all the family re echoed. God bless us, everyone, said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

[Charles Dickens]

And he shows Scrooge that even in a household that doesn't have very much money, Christmas can still be celebrated with great joy and with great fervor.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Spirit, said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, tell me if Tiny Tim will live.

[Narrator]

If these shadows remain owed by the.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Future, the child will die. The chimes were ringing the 3/4 past 11.

[Charles Dickens]

At that moment, at the end of that stave, they're called the different sections of the carol.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I see something strange, said Scrooge.

[Charles Dickens]

The Ghost of Christmas Present presents Scrooge with these two children that he produces from beneath his cloak.

[Narrator]

Two children named Ignorance and Want.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet and clung upon the outside of its garment.

[Narrator]

And the ghost says to Scrooge, they are man's, they are mankind's children.

[Charles Dickens]

And they serve as an example of the depths to which society has sunk, particularly in how it treats its children.

[Narrator]

Dickens said of the two of them, ignorance and want. Ignorance was the one that must be feared more than anything. Because if you leave a child to grow up in ignorance without any understanding of how to care for themselves, or care for other people, or care for the world, you create all the villains that Dickens wrote about.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

The bell struck 12. Scrooge looked about him for the ghost and saw it as the last stroke ceased to vibrate. He beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the.

[Narrator]

Ground towards him a very silent, scary ghost who's often identified with the Grim Reaper.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim, shall we?

[Charles Dickens]

So, amongst the things that the ghost of Christmas yet to come shows Scrooge are the situation in the Cratchit household, where the Cratchit's young child, Tiny Tim, has now died.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

When we recollect how patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child, we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.

[Charles Dickens]

And then we're shown an image of a house that is cold.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

He lay in the dark, empty house with not a man, a woman or a child to say that he was kind to me in this or that. Am I the man who lay upon the bed? He cried upon his knees.

[Charles Dickens]

And it turns out that this is Scrooge's own house. After Scrooge has died.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

No, spirit. Oh, no, no.

[Charles Dickens]

Nobody mourns him. And at that point, Scrooge breaks down completely.

[Narrator]

Spirit.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

He cried, tight, clutching at its rope. Hear me. I am not the man I was. I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present and the future. The spirit of all three shall strive within me.

[Charles Dickens]

And then he wakes up and we see him at the end, calling out the window to a boy.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

What's today, my fine fellow? Today? Replied the boy. Why, Christmas Day. Do you know whether they've sold that prized turkey that was hanging up there?

[Charles Dickens]

Buy the biggest turkey that he can.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Is hanging up there now, replied the boy.

[Narrator]

Is it?

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Said Scrooge.

[Charles Dickens]

Go and buy it and deliver it to the Cratchits as their Christmas dinner. As a kind of apology for not just how he's treated his clerk, but, I suppose, in a way, how he's treated all of humanity. We heard at the end of the story from the narrator that Scrooge keeps Christmas in his heart.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

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, everyone.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

In just six weeks, Dickens had finished his book. He called it A Christmas Carol. His publisher was sure it was going to flop. And with his debts stacking up, Dickens personally invested in publishing 6,000 copies of the book. Then he held his breath and waited for the first reviews to come in.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Coming up, Christmas takes off.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

Hi, this is Adam Taper calling from Woodland Hills, California.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And you're getting smarter because you're listening.

[Narrator]

To Throughline from npr.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

I D I.com Part 31001 humbugs when it came out in 1843, A Christmas Carol was a sensation.

[Charles Dickens]

The first edition sold out almost immediately.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

6,000 copies in just a few days leading up to Christmas Eve.

[Narrator]

It was an instant success, a kind of overnight success.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

And by the time of Charles Dickens second US visit in 1867, A Christmas.

[Narrator]

Carol had just become legendary.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Dickens traveled by train from as far south as Washington, D.C. and as far north as Maine, hosting hundreds of readings, hitting up major cities like New York and Boston.

[Charles Dickens]

With an elastic step, he ascended the platform and moved quickly to his crimson throne, the applause meanwhile spreading and deepening till the whole audience joined in one universal and enthusiastic plaudit, which continued for several minutes.

[Narrator]

Everything he did just sold out.

[Charles Dickens]

There are stories of people who would wait on the street overnight in order to obtain entry to his readings. People felt that they could sympathize with the characters. People spoke about the pathos that Dickens had inserted into Tiny Tim.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

God bless us, everyone.

[Narrator]

For the poorer people, it was, I'm finally being talked about.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I'll raise your salary and endeavor to assist your struggling family.

[Charles Dickens]

People spoke about the humanity that Dickens had inserted into the holiday.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present, and the future.

[Charles Dickens]

Christmas Carol became kind of the do it yourself manual for how to do Christmas.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And people were doing Christmas, like for real.

[Narrator]

So people realized this is a time for family and friends. It became fashionable to have the kind of Christmas parties that were described in A Christmas Carol, inviting lonely people as he's attempted to invite Uncle Scrooge.

[Charles Dickens]

Also, we have Christmas carols, the songs that is associated with Christmas. They call up for people those memories that they have of the songs that are sung at Christmas. That's still the case, of course, because whenever you go into a store in any place in the world, virtually, you will hear Christmas music.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The commercial side of Christmas was growing too. The first Christmas card was sold in 1843, the year a Christmas Carol published. The first in store Santa appeared in Macy's department store in the 1860s. And on that US trip in 1867, Dickens himself was a product. He wrote about this in his letters.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

The excitement of the readings continues unabated. The tickets for readings are sold as soon as they are ready, and the public pay treble prices to the speculators who buy them up.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

In one letter, he mentions a man who sold a ticket for $50, which is more than $1,000 today. There were often famous authors in the audience. The readings were covered in the national press.

[Narrator]

He was so famous, he couldn't move without people wanting to talk to him.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

If I stop to look in at a shop window, a score of passersby stop.

[Charles Dickens]

He also had photographs of himself taken that were sold by street hawkers and others at these venues of his reading. So it was very much the kind of 19th century equivalent of going to a Taylor Swift concert and finding, you know, all kinds of Taylor Swift memorabilia and T shirts and bracelets. Whatever else you can imagine that would increase the devotion of the fans to Taylor, or in this case, to Charles. He will make plenty of money, there is no doubt.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

The New York Times.

[Charles Dickens]

While we think of A Christmas Carol as something that is heartfelt and something that Dickens wanted to deliver as this kind of gift to the public, we mustn't forget that it was also a commercial venture and indeed one in which Dickens himself invested. It was as much a financial decision as it was this kind of humanitarian gift that Dickens was giving to the world. He was never completely a humanitarian. He was always the consummate businessman.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Okay, so a little Bob Cratchit and maybe a little Scrooge. There were ways in which A Christmas Carol did seem like it was having the kind of impact Dickens had hoped for, or at least according to the lore.

[Narrator]

There's a story that he was giving a talk in Boston, giving a reading from A Christmas Carol. And in his audience was a factory owner from Chicago who had a Scrooge like Epiphany, who went back to Chicago and said that from that time on, all his employees would get Christmas Day off and every family who worked for him would be given a turkey every Christmas.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

But Lucinda Dickens Hoxley, his great great great granddaughter, says that Dickens also had a healthy dose of skepticism that Turkey at Christmas was a nice gesture, but what about the 364 other days of the year? How were workers treated? Who looked out for the poor? Were things really changing for the better?

[Narrator]

Nothing was ever enough for Dickens. He was a campaigner all his life. He wrote journalism right up to the end. He never stopped being frustrated by the human condition, by, you know, political situations.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Dickens left the United States in April of 1868. He'd made a lot of money off his readings. Tax inspectors had been chasing Dickens, trying to get a portion of the taxes he owed. Lucinda writes in her book that the sight of the tax inspectors on the harbor after their ship had already set sail cheered Dickens soul.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Dickens died in 1870, just a couple years after returning from his trip. Two weeks after his death, Christmas was made a federal holiday in the U.S.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Dickens had always encouraged what he called a carol philosophy. A carol philosophy.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Call it the Christmas spirit.

[Charles Dickens]

Cheerful views, sharp anatomization of humbug. So that's hypocrisy. Jolly good temper. Papers always in season, hat to the time of the year, and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful, beaming reference in everything to home and fireside.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

But modern Christmas is also undeniably about money. Giving it, sure, but also spending it.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

What do you think the Christmas book that Dickens, if he were alive today, would look like?

[Narrator]

Oh, if I knew that, I'd write it and make my fortune.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

You got the name already.

[Narrator]

To be fair, I think Ebenezer Scrooge is absolutely alive and kicking in many areas of the world. There is still a huge amount of child poverty. There's so much inequality of wealth. I mean, Scrooge basically is pretty much all of us. Everybody needs to look around them and see what needs to change. Everybody needs to understand that actually nothing is going to change unless we do.

[Charles Dickens]

We should become more familiar with our own past because the past has things to teach us. And I think that we all have a responsibility to the past. And we look towards the future, hopefully with bright hopes and with optimism. But at the same time, we have to be looking in both directions.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdel Fattah.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to throughline from npr.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

This episode was produced by me and.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Me and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya.

[Narrator]

Steinberg, Casey Minor, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama.

[Ghost of Christmas Past]

I'm Dominic Gerard. I was the voice of Charles Dickens in this episode. I'm an actor and musician and I host a podcast called Charles Dickens a Brain on fire.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Voiceover work in this episode was also done by Darian Woods, Devin Katayama, Irene Noguchi and Helen De la Haye.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Thank you to Johannes Durgi, Tony Kavan, Stuart Harding, Nadia Lancy, Edith Chapin and Colin Campbell.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel. This episode was mixed by Gili Moon. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which.

[Charles Dickens]

Includes Navid Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

[Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]

And if you're looking for a gift for your loved ones this holiday season, consider getting them a Throughline tote bag or T shirt. You can find them at shopnpr.dot fork. Don't be a Scrooge. Get one today.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Thanks for listening.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

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