A Christmas Carol (Chiltern Classic)

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Twas the Night Before Christmas: Edited by Santa Claus for the Benefit of Children of the 21st Century" (2012) being Pamela McColl "smoke-free" edit of Clement Clarke Moore's poem

In addition to being hard of heart, Scrooge is a man with a deliberate philosophy of self-exoneration. It consists of two principles: 1) taxpayers fund the poor houses and prisons, thereby discharging in full their obligation to all of their fellow human beings, and 2) death by starvation, although it may seem regrettable, is actually a positive good as proven by science (because Malthus!), and relieves the rest of us of the burden of a surplus population. This philosophy is the shield that protects Scrooge from feeling the pains of sympathy and compassion. There is humour too, such as observing that a coffin nail would be deader than the proverbial doornail. Whilst it is a book whose unhurried and detailed descriptions of Christmas are the epitome of the season (“ apoplectic opulence”), it is a book of great contrasts: humbug/festivities, hot/cold, company/solitude, poverty/wealth, worthy poor/wastrels, past/future etc. Marley himself is one of the condemned, as greedy and avaricious as his old partner, and now bearing a “ponderous chain” corresponding to his selfish life. He informs Scrooge that his own chain is even larger, yet there is the possibility of escape. This lifeline is comprised of three separate ghosts – Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come – who will visit him on three separate nights.This passage really got to me, and I started to cry. In February, I started an experimental treatment, and I was able to walk again. When I go to church, there are usually no seats left except in the front. As part of my genetic defect, my body can’t process protein. There are extremely high levels of protein in my blood including my brain, and it makes me unbearably tired. Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean, miserable, bitter old man with no friends. One cold Christmas Eve, three ghosts take him on a scary journey to show him the error of his nasty ways. By visiting his past, present and future, Scrooge learns to love Christmas and the people all around him. His name always makes me laugh. But to READ the name in print is almost more fizzy fun than to merely hear it said.

It’s the idea that if a man is born into this world, and his parents can’t look after him, and he can’t look after himself, he is ‘surplus’ … and the sooner he dies, the better,” Slater says.A Christmas Carol isn’t just a cheery, uplifting tale that we can mimic in various modern ways,” says Mayhew. “It’s a very seriously intended work of moral fiction and, perhaps because we tend to pigeonhole it as a Christmas story, we don’t read just how serious it is.” Who does not recognise this expostulation, and the old curmudgeon who spat it out. The very name "Scrooge" has entered the vernacular to indicate a mean-spirited skinflint. It was an attitude that stemmed from the work of well-known political economists such as Adam Smith, who believed that if everyone acted in their own self-interest, the invisible hand of the market would distribute resources. Gordon, Alexander; McConnell, Anita (2008). "Elwes [ formerly Meggott], John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/8776. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Finally, I have taken it upon myself to read the source material! Did I like it? Two words: BAH, HUMBUG!

If you're interested in a brief glossary of some of the Victorian terms that aren't familiar to us nowadays, I found a very useful set of annotations online at http://drbacchus.com/files/christmas_..., along with some brief commentary from someone who clearly loves this story. I found this when I went on a search to figure out what Treadmills had to do with England's treatment of the poor. It was very instructive! The whole point of the book is that he changes for the better, and right from the start there are hints that he wasn’t and isn’t irredeemably bad. For example, he never removed Marley’s name from the sign above his office. I don’t think the reason was solely parsimony because during and after the ghostly encounters, we see different aspects of Scrooge, surely exposed by the ghosts, not actually created by them. So maybe part of the reason for leaving the name was a fondness for the memory of his friend and partner - a link to happier times. Though Scrooge is a bit hesitant of this deal, he is ultimately given little choice on the matter, and those three visits comprise the unforgettable spine of this book. After Scrooge leaves his office, there’s this: “Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed.” I figured there’d be a whole couple of paragraphs at the restaurant. Nope!

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Le Père Martin" (1888) by Ruben Saillens and unwittingly plagiarized as " Papa Panov's Special Christmas" by Leo Tolstoy

The smug pun on "gravy" and "grave" is amusing, and there's a poetry of sorts in that "fragment of an underdone potato." Davidson, Ewan. "Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)". Screenonline. British Film Institute . Retrieved 10 January 2017. Not even to mention the Southern hemisphere and the immense, unnecessary, by a fair economic system easily preventable, suffering of billions and dying of tens of millions of people directly caused by this system. Davis, Paul (1990a). The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-04664-9.

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This year, we didn’t put up a Christmas tree, and I haven’t been feeling the “Christmas spirit.” But this book squarely right sided the situation. Celebrating the Christmas season had been growing in popularity through the Victorian era. [4] The Christmas tree had been introduced in Britain during the 18th century, and its use was popularised by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Their practice was copied in many homes across the country. [5] In the early 19th century there had been a revival of interest in Christmas carols, following a decline in popularity over the previous hundred years. The publication of Davies Gilbert's 1823 work Some Ancient Christmas Carols, With the Tunes to Which They Were Formerly Sung in the West of England and William Sandys's 1833 collection Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern led to a growth in the form's popularity in Britain. [6] At first, I typed up lyrics and made full-size booklets for our guests but they often requested to actually read music notes! So this year, I decided it was time to make new mini booklets complete with actual songs. DeVito, Carlo (2014). Inventing Scrooge (Kindleed.). Kennebunkport, ME: Cider Mill Press. ISBN 978-1-60433-555-2.