It’s Christmas Eve, and Ebenezer Scrooge is sitting in his counting house while his clerk, Bob Cratchit, is trying to keep warm because Scrooge refuses to spend money on coal to heat the room. It also established the practice of demonstrating Christmas charity to the poor and disadvantaged. Intensely interested in the crises of child labor and living conditions of the poor, Charles Dickens believed that the only way to change society was to change hearts.Ī Christmas Carol was written quickly and was immediately popular, even though Christmas was not yet the major holiday that it is today. Social reform in nineteenth century England was very important, and Dickens, remembering how difficult his family’s life was growing up, expressed the turmoil of that time in his writing. His job was to put labels on jars of polish.

His father spent time in a debtors’ prison, and Dickens himself was sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory when he was just twelve years old. Dickens was just 31 years old and was not far removed from memories of his own childhood.

Charles Dickens, born in England in 1812, was one of the most recognized writers and social critics of his day.ĭickens wrote his novella in two months in the fall of 1843 as a way of addressing many of the social ills in English society at the time. Last Friday, Gary and I had the opportunity to see the play, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, perhaps the most popular Christmas story of all time.

Merry christmas one and all tiny tim