A Christmas Carol

Odd as it may sound, yesterday I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens for the first time. Like most people in America (and I suppose in the UK), I have lived my life watching various filmed versions of this most famous of all Christmas stories (I mean, aside from the Christmas Story), not to mention probably the most famous ghost story. I even portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in a 7th grade Speech & Drama class. I don’t know why I was given the role, I can’t act at all, but I will chalk it up to the fact that I could commit the lines to memory quickly. Among the many portrayals of the old miser, in films classic and modern, I share the opinion of several critics that Michael Caine was the best Ebenezer Scrooge ever–even though he played the part in The Muppets Christmas Carol. As one critic put it, it was genius that Michael Caine decided to play the part perfectly straight, even though he was playing across from Muppets.

But for all my immersion in the story, I had never actually sat down to read it. I read it in a volume called The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens. For anyone who does not know, he wrote quite a few. Many of them he attributed to his childhood nanny, whom he called ‘Mercy,’ but proclaimed, ‘she showed me none.’ He was frightened stiff by many of her stories, but she would not relent in the telling of them.

The longest story in the book (one he does not attribute to Mercy) is A Christmas Carol. This being my first reading, I do have some observations. One is that when Jacob Marley’s ghost first appears to Scrooge, he explains that three spirits will visit him over three nights. Since the story begins on Christmas Eve, that would make it December 27th when Scrooge awakes to find everything in order and his spirit transformed. But he hears the church bells and inquires of the boy on the street what day it is, and is told it is Christmas Day. ‘The spirits have done it all in one night,’ he muses, ‘They can do anything they like.’ Okay, I guess that explains it. But it still seems to me to be a narrative flaw. Why does Dickens just not have Marley say he will be visited by three spirits tonight?

Another observation is the usual thing readers encounter when watching movies based on books: the book is so much richer than the movie. Almost every movie version of A Christmas Carol chooses the same things from the book to portray. They want two central conflicts, one between Scrooge and the Cratchit family, the other between the spirit of Christmas and Scrooge’s own miserly character. This works wonderfully for movies and leads quickly to sentimental resolutions.

But there is so much more in the book that is seems like some screenwriter or director might have chosen to include. The spirits wander more widely, and show Scrooge so much more. The party at Old Fezziwig’s, in the Christmas Past section, is a wonderful Dickens set piece, with the raucous dancing and drinking described in humorous detail. The spirit of Christmas present, especially, takes Scrooge not only to the Cratchit home and to his nephew Fred’s party, but to the Christmas celebrations of poor miners and to two lonely lighthouse keepers who share between them the joy of the day. Most movies have the scene where the Ghost of Christmas Past reveals the two starving children in his robes–Want and Ignorance–and throws Scrooge’s words back in his teeth: ‘If they be like to die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’ But there are many other powerful exchanges between Scrooge and the three spirits–why does this one make the cut? It is almost as if successive movies do not use the book as the basis for their screenplays so much as previous movies.

Of course, all of this is by way of stating the obvious: if you want to know what’s in the book, you must read the book. It is richer and deeper than any movie will ever be. If you, like me, think it’s not worth the time because you know the material so well, all I can say is I’ve learned my lesson.