The Daily Signal - History of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

In many homes across the country, it’s not Christmas without sitting down to watch an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol." But according to Hillsdale College professor of English Dwight Lindley, many of the film versions fail to relay the full, rich message Dickens sought to portray in the 1843 novel.  “A Christmas Carol” is “actually about the incarnation of Christ,” Lindley says. Dickens, according to Lindley, takes Scrooge on a journey of becoming more childlike so that he can come to a place “where he can meet God.”  The story intends to call to mind the biblical passage in Mark 9 that says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.”  Lindley explains that the invitation in the novel is for Scrooge to receive Tiny Tim, and in so doing, receive Christ.  Lindley joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the history of why Dickens wrote the novel, and the rich biblical themes woven through “A Christmas Carol.” Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let it carry you along and draw out your joy. And then also let it tug at your heartstrings, actually. I think it's supposed to get in deep and stir our hearts. This is the Daily Still Podcast for Friday, December 22nd. I'm Virginia Allen. And that was Hillsdale College Professor of English, Dwight Lindley. Dr. Lindley has just completed a course at Hillsdale on Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol. He joins us on the show today to share the history of a Christmas Carol who Dickens' primary audience was when he wrote it and how biblical themes of faith are woven throughout the story.

And I honestly could not think of a better conversation to have just three days before Christmas. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it talking to Dr. Lindley. So stay tuned for our conversation after this. Hi, this is Rob Louis, executive editor of the Daily Signal and co-host of this. podcast. Each day we strive to bring you news you can trust. We see it as our mission to cut through the liberal media spin and provide honest, thorough, and responsible reporting on the most important issues of the day. But we can't do it without your help. As we approach the end of the year, the Daily Signal is counting on donations from listeners like you. We are the non-profit news

outlet of the Heritage Foundation and rely on generous gifts from our supporters. Please help us by making a tax-deductible year-end gift. You can do so by visiting Daily Significant. dot com slash donate. Your gift will ensure that we continue producing cutting edge journalism and investigative reporting. Again, that website is daily signal.com slash donate. Thanks for listening. We are grateful for your support. It is my honor today to be joined by Hillsdale College Professor of English, Dwight Lindley. Professor Lindley, Dr. Lindley, thank you so much for being with us today. Happy to be here, Virginia. Thank you. Well, Dr. Lindley, you just finished teaching a course at Hillsdale on a Christmas Carol. And as I mentioned before we started today, I think that

sounds like the perfect college course. And I certainly wish that my university had offered a course like this. What is known about the history behind Dickens deciding to write a Christmas Carol? What do we know about that history? Sure. It's an interesting question. He wrote it in 1843. and that year a big report came out in London about the effects of the Industrial Revolution in England and how all these people had moved to the cities and were living in squalid conditions. There were little kids working in factories and all of the things that people have probably heard at least some about, some things about some of the worst, you know, early stages of industrial revolution. Dickens read this report and was shocked by it.

He really loved walking around London, especially the poor parts of London, would walk for miles. So, see, he wanted to write something that would call people to attention about this, to thinking about this. what would we need to do? And he at first thought of writing a pamphlet, but then later decided actually a work of imaginative fiction would make a way bigger difference. And then it kind of clicked with him that I need to write. I need to set this at Christmas time. Christmas has to have something to do with this. And who was Dickens' audience? Oh, well, by that time, he was a very popular novelist already. He had had several bestsellers at that point. And so he was a household name, even though he was a relatively young man, you know, he was, what, 31 years old at the time.

He was already a well-known writer and had an audience already, you know, well-established. Whatever he wanted to say. He also wrote journalism frequently. And so he's a prolific guy with a good audience already. Well, it's a story that has, you know, really taken on a life of its own in many ways. In America, I think every, you know, almost every home watches a Christmas Carol. One of the iterations of a Christmas Carol around Christmas time. In my family, our favorite is a Muppets Christmas Carol. But as you, I know, have pointed out in the teaching on a Dickens Christmas Carol, is that so many of the films, while beautiful, they do miss some of the core tenets and message that

Dickens was really trying to portray in a Christmas Carol. What is the message that you think many of these movies fall short of fully capturing that is maybe reason to pause and instead of just watching the movie this December, actually read the book. Right, good question. I think the movies catch certain kinds of things and miss other kinds of things, depending on some of it is about the medium. The medium doesn't lend itself to a lot of narration, the medium of film. And so while there are some versions, actually like the Muppets, actually you catch a lot, of Dickens' narrative voice because they have, I believe it's Gonzo.

Yeah. Narrating. It is. And so they actually give us a lot of Dickens' own descriptions there, which are really rich. And another thing that, let's see, is frequently missed, I think, by the film versions is the childlikeness of the story. part of the wonder about it is Scrooge has to learn how to be a child again as an old man. One of the reasons I would say people tend to miss that in the films, you know, Muppets aside,

a lot of the TV and film adaptations really lean more into the scary stuff. And which, you know, which is there, but it's not a horror story, you know, through these experiences, Scrooge becoming a child again. Okay, so that's connected to the last point I wanted to make, which I think gets to your question the most of all, which is that the story is about actual Christmas. It's actually about the incarnation of Christ. In Stave 3, you know, the chapters are called staves in this book for like difficult staffs because it's a carol, it's a song. at the end of Stave 3 when he's being guided by the second ghost, the narrator says at one point, he's talking about this household Fred, you know, the nephew Fred's family playing games together. And he says, they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while, they played at forfeits.

For it is good to be children sometimes and never better than at Christmas when its mighty founder was a child. child himself. The idea that God became a child at Christmas, therefore we all have to actually remember how to be children again in our own ways. That's what happens to Scrooge. Yeah. And so he's actually becoming more, he's actually coming to a place where he can meet God by becoming a child. And then the last thing that I think makes that even clearer is from stave four when he's with the third ghost that goes to Christmas yet to come. And he oversees the Cratchett family after Tiny Tim has, you know, in this imaginary future, has died. And they're reading the Bible together. And the oldest Cratchett boy, Peter Cratchett, is reading the gospel.

and he reads this line, and he took a child and set him in the midst of them. Okay. So this is a line from Mark chapter 9, verse 36. And Scrooge is sitting there listening to this, overhearing it. And the narrator says, where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out as he and the spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on?

And so the narrator there is, is actually subtly prodding us to wonder what is the next line. What's the next verse? And this is a much more biblically literate audience that Dickens is writing for than one we live in. And so he's prodding people to think, what is the next line? The next line, if you look, from Mark 937 is, whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveeth me. So I think for my money, that is at the heart of the novella.

Yeah. It's a series of children getting put into the midst of, well, into Scrooge's presence, but also really into the midst of all of us as we're reading this. It's a series of children, of poor, of widows, of orphans, of the least of these, getting put into the midst of us so that we can have. have the chance to receive them and in receiving them to receive, to receive God, to encounter God. I think he's trying to do that in a subtle way to represent the mystery of God coming to earth

in, you know, in the least of these. I think this is so fascinating. And you're right. I'm like that the language is so. rich and it is a tragedy that we don't necessarily talk about that that richness of language. When we talk about the Christmas Carol and those beautiful biblical and faith tenants that were worked in to the story and it's making me wonder, did Charles Dickens intend that as adults when we read the story of the Christmas Carol that we would place ourselves in the position

of Scrooge and kind of take that self-examination of, you know, where have I maybe missed the spirit of Christmas, the spirit of faith in my life? Because I think for so many of us, we approach the story of a Christmas carol and specifically Scrooge as, well, I couldn't be that bad because he has been painted as sort of the villain in the story in some ways that then is turned around. Yeah. But do you think that Dickens intended that when we heard the story, that we would understand, know, somewhere in my life, maybe that is my personality, that

is my outlook on life is kind of the same as Scrooge. And let me examine that. That's a good question. Yeah, I think that he does aim at that. And you can actually see this if you look at the little bitty preface to the book. It's right before the first stave starts. Dickens said this. And this was there from the very first time.

this was published as a book. He says right before it starts, I have endeavored in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves and with each other with the season or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly and no one wished to lay it. And so what he wants is for his book to be a ghostly present. to us in the same way that these ghosts are there for Scrooge, which means if you kind of work it out, the same thing that the ghosts in the story are doing for Scrooge he wants to do for us with this book, you know? Yeah.

So it's exactly what you're talking about. Very fascinating. And he's really encouraging us to have this book carry us back into our past and, of course, into our present and future also as Scrooge is carried there. I mean, it doesn't really take that much work to realize how much like Scrooge we are. I mean, he's basically a workaholic who is so caught up in material concerns that he has a hard time seeing other people. Yeah. That's many, many, many, many people in the world today.

And it happens without, they're even realizing. it, which is what happens to Scrooge doesn't know that that's what happened to him. It just happened without his realization. And often you have a week where you really get in that place, right? You know, I think we think of the strong caricature of the people that are always like that, but we have all had those days, haven't we? A little bit Scrooge-like, yes. Right, or maybe a certain kind of relationship that we have, certain kinds of people that

we tend to be blind to or we we tend to wall ourselves off from the difficult people, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The people who are actually poor who need us in some annoying way. I don't know, you know. Yeah. No, absolutely.

That's very, very real. Well, you also, I know in the course you drew some allusions to Dante's divine comedy. as well and that there was parallels in Charles Dickens of Christmas Carol with Dante's work. Explain that a little bit if you would. Oh, sure. Well, it's peculiar. When Marley's ghost arrives in the first stave, one, he's wrapped up in these chains that are composed out of old, like, strong boxes and lock boxes and, you know, There are, and you know, he's a money man, formerly.

And so he's wrapped up with these symbols of his own vices, of his own sins, which is a Dante, like a Dantesque framework. You know, in Dante's hell famously, people are, sinners are punished by their own ways of life. the, you know, the idea being that sin is its own punishment, right? To go to hell for Dante, and even really just kind of classically, go to hell is to be given the life choices that you have already made and to be given them in perpetuity and really be tormented by them. So Marley has that kind of that kind of poetic justice

about his appearance that is Don Tessk. And the other thing is he doesn't actually seem to be from hell. He has this kind of you know, he talks about suffering

and yet he's there for Scrooge's good. This is the peculiar thing about it. It's not really clear where he comes from. You know, Dickens didn't really seem to have believed in purgatory. This was not something that was common to believe in for a 19th century, British, you know, largely Protestant people. But all I'm saying is like this guy, this guy comes from an afterlife and where he's suffering for his sins on earth.

and he is focused on helping Scrooge avoid this himself. And so, you know, classically, hell is someplace where you go and you're locked into your, into your sin and your hatred and your unhappiness. It's not a place where you go to do good deeds or something. Yeah. Anyway, whatever we make of that, it just sounds like some. some dantsque in-between place that he's channeling. Very fascinating.

It's a little bit like purgatory, but. Yeah. It's fascinating to see those parallels. So as we sit down and we watch or we read through the story of Dickens' Christmas Carol, this December, this Christmas season, what should be a few things that we're keeping in mind and maybe a new set of glasses, if you will, that we wear as we read and watch. and watch the story. That's a good question. I think my first advice would be to let it be funny. It's an absolutely hilarious book.

And the, you want to, if you're not feeling joy reading it, then you're not reading it. It's something that is actually meant to elicit your, your cheer and to make you have fun even when scrooge is talking at the start and you know he's a what does it say he's a he's an old he's a cussed old sinner and and and all of these funny things that are that are sad you know what does he say to his nephew he's talking about what a world of fools is this, you know, people celebrating Christmas. It's a time when you're paying bills without money and, you know, you're finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer and all of these complaints. And all of you guys should be boiled in your own pudding when buried with a steak

of Holly through your heart. Okay, humbug. And all of this stuff, even there, where Scrooge is this kind of magnificent jerk, it's actually kind of funny. And he's, He's, one of the things I argue in the lectures is, Scrooge enjoys his own language so much that it's hard to hate him, right? You can look at him and say, well, that guy's, wow, that guy's a piece of work or, or that guy's messed up in this or that way. But you're not going to fall asleep. And you can even enjoy him before his transformation really occurs. So, okay, my advice is really to let it carry you along and draw out your joy. And then also let it tug at your heartstrings, actually.

I think it's supposed to get in deep and stir our hearts. I think sometimes people can feel like they know it so well, just like the gospel itself, quite frankly. they feel like they know it so well that you just sort of turn off and go into autopilot but you don't know it just like you don't really know the infancy narratives

in the gospel you have to you know with a good book you want to let it read you you know and so that's really the main reason I gave these lectures is to try to give people a fresh chance

to take a new look, to open up some new doors, some new windows, so that it could be fresh and it could read us a little bit more and not just slip us into the old ruts. Yeah, absolutely beautiful. Well, Dr. Lindley, thank you for your time today. Thank you for that perspective for the history and Merry Christmas to you. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. and I hope that we all take a little bit of time this Christmas season to sit down to enjoy, to find joy in a Dickens Christmas Carol. Dr. Lindley, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Virginia. It's my pleasure. Well, Merry Christmas to our Daily Signal family. This is our last interview edition before Christmas. We will not have a show on Monday. We won't have any shows on Monday. As it is Christmas Day, we hope that you all are getting some wonderful quality time with family and friends, time to slow down. on time to reflect on the reason for the season. We are looking forward, though, to next week, starting Tuesday, bringing you the best of the best from 2023. We are looking back at our top shows from the year. We're going to be sharing four different conversations with you starting next Tuesday through Friday. These are conversations that you loved, that we loved,

and we are so excited to be looking back on them. If you want to give the Daily Signal a Christmas gift before the end of the year. If you would, leave us a five-star rating and review. It really helps us across podcast platform, both to hear your feedback, but then also just to spread the word to other listeners. But we hope that you have a wonderful and incredibly blessed Christmas from all of us here at the Daily Single team. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for being a part of this family. We wouldn't be able to do what we do here without you. Have a very Merry Christmas. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by. more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinco. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop.

To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.