Headscratchers / A Christmas Carol

Ghost's punishment makes no sense

• The wandering ghosts like Marley are forced to carry the burden of their greed for all of eternity (chains). Forced to Watch both the suffering that they benefited from in life, and all the surplus sorrow that they can never help now, and turn misery into happiness. But why would evil rich people even care? They're evil. They didn't care about their fellow man while among the living, why suddenly regret it now after death? They were steadfast, selfish, and so stubborn in their ways, that even if they had a second chance at life, they would screw themselves all over again. The only thing evil people regret upon death... is their own deaths.
  • Its also confusing why Marley one moment implies he's being punished by some enigmatic higher power, but the next passage says its his own doing, his own penance. So which is it?
    • It's both. Marley is being punished by a higher power, but he recognizes that he is being justly punished, so he views both his punishment and his penance as his own fault.
• Dying and suddenly finding yourself chained and unable to remain in one place for very long apparently changes one's perspective.

Marley Breaks Ghost Rules?

• How did Jacob Marley appear to help Scrooge when it's explicitly shown in that scene the tormented spirits are unable to do so? Marley, same as the rest of them, were unable to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost that power forever.
  • See below about Marley "procuring" the opportunity. Apparently he was able to convince whatever higher powers there be to give him some kind of special dispensation in this regard.

Ignorance is the Bigger Brat

• One thing I can never understand, when the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge Ignorance and Want, he says that Ignorance has "Doom" written on his forehead. What did this mean, and why did Ignorance alone have it?
  • The implication is that Want is more the symptom, and Ignorance is more the disease, the root of the problem, and will destroy mankind if left unchecked.
    • Maybe it's because want can be good sometimes (if you never wanted food, you might starve for instance), while ignorance is always bad.
    • "Want" might mean "Poverty", not "Desire". After all, this was written in England a long time ago.
    • Want, in this context, does mean poverty and destitution. See the anti-poverty charity War on Want for the use of the term. People who were, and are, destitute are said to be in "a state of want". It is a little old fashioned, but it is a valid use of the term.
  • Because the ignorant cannot see their own fate, no matter how obvious it is.
  • Or maybe Christmas Present was warning that Ignorance was the greater threat to Scrooge specifically, not to humanity in general. Scrooge was never poverty-stricken, after all - his meager diet and lifestyle were due to stinginess, not lack of funds - but his ignorance (read: willful blindness) of the harm his miserly ways were inflicting upon others and himself was putting his soul's peace in peril. Indeed, correcting Ignorance by showing him past, present and future events was precisely how the spirits saved Scrooge.

Why a Paid Day Off?

• Why does Scrooge, being the greedy miser he is, give Bob Cratchit a paid day off?
  • If not a law, it's a firmly established tradition to give a paid day off at Christmas. Besides, as Bob says in some adaptations, there won't be anyone to do business with anyway. So why pay Bob and pay for the coal, candles, etc. that's required to keep the office open?
  • If one was so inclined, you could also use it as a shred of basic (grudging) humanity within Scrooge that hasn't been completely extinguished, thus suggesting that there's something within him that's capable of being redeemed.

Saving Scrooge Without Knowing How

• If Jacob Marley doesn't know how he came to Scrooge in a visible form, how did he procure the chance to save him?
  • He arranged for Scrooge's chance at redemption, and knows full well that the Christmas spirits can manifest themselves to the living, but he is a different sort of wandering spirit.
  • Marley is clearly not in control of any of this; he's probably got no idea how anything in the afterlife really works. Presumably the "procuring" Marley did boiled down to approaching whatever mighty higher power that's actually running things and begging him/her/it to give his old business partner a fighting chance at avoiding the same terrible fate as Marley's.
  • He says he "may not tell" how it is that he appears before Scrooge tonight. He may mean that he is not permitted to tell Scrooge. Earlier he says that he can't offer comfort "Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is permitted me." It seems that Marley is under strict limits of what he can tell Scrooge of the afterlife and is not permitted to remain in one place very long, though he says "I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day," as part of his penance.

Luminescent Lobster

• Charles Dickens, master of using the right English word in the right English situation, compares the unnatural light around Marley's apparition to a "bad lobster in a dark cellar." Wha? Lobsters don't glow, no matter how bad they are or how dark the cellar. Is this some old-time slang that's long been forgotten?
  • Seafood is notorious for hosting bioluminescent bacteria when it goes off. The bacteria itself actually lives in the seawater, but it feeds on rotten meat so that any lobster bought fresh off the stall (which would be wet from the seawater, unlike the washed and cleaned fish of modern counters) would be coated in the bacteria. As the lobster ages and goes off, the bacteria start to feed and to glow. The glow is fairly faint, so you would need to have somewhere pitchblack to watch it happen; like a cellar. The glowing rotten seafood would be familiar to the Victorian people in the age before refrigerators. There is a very good David Attenborough documentary which covers this called "Life That Glows" and is available on the usual internet places.

Why Redeem Scrooge?

• Why was Scrooge, of all people, given this special chance for redemption? Especially if, as Marley claimed, Scrooge's chains (sins) were heavier than his.
  • Scrooge was given a special chance because he possessed the potential to do great good. It was as much for the sake of everyone who was subsequently uplifted by his redemption as much as it was for Scrooge himself.
  • It is never stated that Marley and the other ghosts mentioned in the book did NOT receive this chance. It isn't unreasonable to assume that they too got a visit from the spirits one Christmas Eve, but failed to heed their warnings.
    • That's true although Marley specifically states that Scrooge's second chance is "of [Marley's] procuring." So you only get ghosts to visit you if you have someone on the other side willing to approach the powers that be and plead on your behalf. So Scrooge was saved by The Power of Friendship as much as anything else.
  • Because if he wasn't chosen, either there'd be no story or we'd be asking the same question about another character instead. If you're going to tell a story about a miser who gets haunted by ghosts to make him change his ways, someone has to be the miser or the story can't be told. So why not Scrooge?
• Because the Ghost of Christmas Future shows a timeline where Scrooge did die unredeemed and alone - it's clear that Ignorance and Want are sending all of mankind sleepwalking down the path of destruction, and the powers-that-be are obviously getting worried enough that they need to employ a Deus ex Machina with It's a Wonderful Plot to try and avert this.

No Vacation for the Shopkeepers

• Scrooge resents Bob's request for a day off on Christmas, and it's treated as the act of a cold-hearted jerk. Yet both his journey with the Ghost of Christmas Present and his actions immediately after waking up on Christmas morning show that London's markets are all open for business. So why is it cruel to ask an accountant to work on the holiday, but perfectly all right to expect the city's grocers and butchers to be on the job rather than home celebrating?
  • There's a difference between a job that involves money-lending and a job that involves providing food. Also Scrooge would most likely hold long hours where as the grocers and butchers and most of England would be celebrating at night, the evening with parties and a Christmas dinner.
  • In those pre-refrigeration days, fresh meat couldn't be purchased in advance to cook another day — butchers were open Christmas morning so people could buy what they needed for the holiday dinner.
    • For that matter, it's also mentioned that many people had to go to "the baker's" to have their bird cooked for them. Not everyone had an oven, either.
  • Working on holiday mornings was just a part of the profession back then, same as modern EMTs and hospital staff need to be on call for Christmas. Indeed, most people back then worked on Christmas, because farmers still outnumbered all other professions globally, and needed to milk the cows and feed the chickens no matter what day it was.
  • Also, the grocers and butchers own and operate their own shops. They have the ability to choose whether or not they open on Christmas morning if they want to, and they also have the ability to allow any employees they may have to have the day off if so they wish. Bob, on the other hand, is the employee. In the former situation, someone is making a choice to work on Christmas morning; in the latter, someone is forcing someone else to work on Christmas morning.
  • Furthermore, in many cases even if you're in a job where there's a possibility you might have to work on Christmas Day, many employers (assuming they're not complete assholes) may try and take some of the sting out of it for the employee by allowing them a Christmas bonus of some kind — maybe some overtime pay, or a Christmas dinner that they've had prepared, or a nice gift of some kind. Something to say thank you at least. Does anyone seriously think that Bob Cratchit, had he been forced to come in on Christmas Day, would have gotten bonus pay or a watch? Or a nice dinner? Or even an extra lump of coal on the fire?

Why was Dying Alone a Surprise?

• Why was Scrooge surprised to find out that he would die alone and hated? He seemed aware of how poorly people thought of him.
  • It's one thing to think to yourself, "nobody likes me and I don't care", and actually seeing just how little your death affects anything, and how, if anything, his death more or less makes the world BETTER, since he's not around to ruin people's good cheer anymore.
  • Of course, knowing something and seeing it for yourself are two vastly different things. Things we know have relatively mild impact on us, but things we witness have much greater impact. It's pretty obvious that Scrooge, much like most of us today, never thought that he would see his own dead body buried in his own grave, and probably without so much as a coffin to boot. It was being forced to confront the full reality of the situation that shook him up so bad.
  • Isn't there a line in the beginning explicitly stating that Scrooge considered himself a pillar of the community? Bit of a kick in the teeth to have one's self image shattered like that, really.
    • No, there's no line like that; Scrooge has no illusions about what people think of him, he just didn't care in life, but that doesn't mean he expected people to joke and laugh about his death and loot his corpse. He might have been less shocked if there was simply grim indifference to his passing. Also, keep in mind that the story's point is that Scrooge wasn't evil or uncaring by nature, he was originally a good man who had been worn down and twisted by a hard life and his own greed. In some dark corner of his soul, Scrooge didn't really want to be remembered like that.
  • If he'd gotten the Ghosts in backwards order, and Yet To Come came first, he probably wouldn't actually have been too upset about dying alone and hated. Dying, maybe - but the alone and hated part, though, not so much. Dickens makes it clear he's an old misanthrope who prefers people just keep their distance. But by the time Scrooge gets this last visit, his reformation is nearly complete. Past and Present have done most of the work. It's even mentioned that he's been resolving to change and expects to see the changed version of himself in the future visions. Not seeing it is part of the final shock that cements all the lessons in place for good. Past and Present stripped away all the armor and stone and left him vulnerable, and that last shock can now have the intended effect.
  • Also, there's intellectually knowing that people probably aren't going to give two single shits when you die, and then there's seeing it in action. Most assholes have the luxury of not seeing how the world rejoices in their death when they die and just how hated they truly are. Most of them can at least comfort themselves by believing that, thanks to Never Speak Ill of the Dead, the world will at least pretend to mourn them, but Scrooge now has first-hand confirmation that he is so despised that people won't even bother to feign sadness when he dies.
  • To add to the above, Scrooge sees people steal his belongings and laugh about his death when his body's barely cold (i.e. mere hours after he's passed). Even the most grumpy misanthrope would probably be a little taken aback at learning that was going to happen.
  • Also, most people who claim or act like they don't care what people think of them or whether they're liked or not? Really do care.
  • Part of the shock is perhaps dying so soon. Remember that Christmas Present foretold that Tiny Tim would die within a year, and there he was, freshly dead. So we are looking at Christmas next year, at least in that vision. We're not explicitly told it's the same Christmas when we see Scrooge dead and gone, but Scrooge might simply make that assumption. Also: remember that Scrooge has been explicitly told that his fate after death is a nasty one. He's been resolving to change his ways and now he's being shown he really doesn't have much time to do it.

Here Lies Tim Cratchit, Died of... What Exactly?

• What was Tiny Tim going to die of? While his family was poor, they didn't seem to be suffering of malnutrition, and there's no mention of Scrooge paying for any life-saving medical treatment. So, his family having more money saved him? How?
  • He died of poverty. That's not sarcasm, it's a blunt truth. There are a thousand conditions that would leave a young boy in Victorian London with a mobility impairment and weak lungs, especially in the slums where everyone breathed coal dust all day; conditions where he would rally easily if given plenty of healthy food and a warm dry home, but be intensely vulnerable to even a mild cold and be unable to bounce back. The poor in this time and place—especially children—lived on a knife's edge. If Tiny Tim was suffering from rickets, for example, his life could have been saved by the simple expedient of his father making just enough more money a week to afford to buy fresh fruit; an immunocompromised child would live or die on whether the room where he slept in January had a draft.
  • Back in the second half of the 19th century because there weren't any health insurances available in England, doctors were very expensive—too expensive for a family who had to survive on Bob's slim salary and possibly of what his wife and daughter earned as well. With Scrooge's support on the other hand, they were able to afford proper doctors and medicine (and a better diet) to help Tiny Tim.
  • It's also possible that Tim's death in the Bad Future had nothing directly to do with his congenital illness: children in that era could die easily from epidemics, food poisoning, or the sheer squalor of the city even if they were otherwise healthy. It's possible the whole family got exposed to something that made them ill, but Tim's frailty prevented him from recovering like his relatives did. In which case, Bob's increased salary and bonuses from reformed-Scrooge could have let them move out of the slums altogether, away from such threats.
  • Possibly tuberculosis, as one of the symptoms is a cough, and it can cause a limp if it spreads from the lungs to the spine and bones. Or possibly rickets instead, which would be curable at the time but fatal if not treated.

Was Scrooge Murdered?

• The ending implies the Scrooge lives for years after the main plot ends, but in the bad future he was dead a year later. With people pilfering his house already, enough that a joke can be made about the sheets being still warm, was he murdered, just nobody's had time to inspect his body?
  • It's mentioned in the dialogue between the people who'd robbed his death chamber: he got sick all alone in his locked-up house, and didn't have anyone there to care for him. Presumably there were indications that he'd been ill, like dried-up vomit next to his bed, that Dickens didn't think it fitting to describe in the middle of a Christmas story. Once Scrooge reformed, he'd have had plenty of friends to check up on his welfare during the winter, and hired on servants so as to make his dismal old house into a warm, welcoming place.
  • It is never said in the book which year the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come is showing him. It is expressly said that the Ghost shows him future Christmases out of order, which implies he sees more than just the very next one. So there‘s no reason to assume Scrooge dies (in the bad future) on the same Christmas as Tiny Tim.
  • Also, remember that due to his tight-fistedness, Scrooge despite his wealth basically lives in a complete dump — the type of place that's drafty, damp, and all in all the perfect place for germs to thrive. It's quite likely that after his Heel–Face Turn, Scrooge looked around at his home, thought to himself something along the lines of "Christ, I really do live in a shithole, don't I?" and moved somewhere nicer where he was less likely to catch a horrible illness and die, or at least became more willing to splash out on hiring someone to keep things clean so that he didn't have to live in squalor in his current rooms.
  • The fact that his mental health would be improved through being a kinder person would also help him live longer, simply by taking better care of himself. It's also possible he overworked himself before and, in the Bad Future perhaps Bob wasn't able to work as much due to Tim's worsening health - meaning Scrooge did more work to make up for it. That problem would also be resolved thanks to Scrooge's Heel–Face Turn. These days it's known that 'crunching' and working longer hours than necessary is going to cause health problems, and at Scrooge's age, it didn't do him any favors.
  • Worth noting that London in the 1830s-1860s was blighted by cholera, the causes of which were unknown (but were at the time suspected to be a 'miasma' in the foul-smelling air due to the open, antiquated sewerage — which was the actual cause of the problem). Entire areas were suddenly struck with epidemics as their water supply was suddenly contaminated. While it's not outright said, it's highly possible that Scrooge would be struck down within a year in one of the many outbreaks that hit the city during the time — especially the shabbier parts where Scrooge, despite his money, lived. Dickens, of course, didn't know about what caused cholera when he wrote the novel (Dr John Snow wouldn't map the Broad Street epidemic and trace it back to a local water pump until 1854), so would presumably mean this symbolically as a result of his sins and miserly ways. But taking what we now know about the disease into account, it's highly likely a miser like him would just get the cheapest-and-therefore-unlikely-to-be-purified water supply he could find, so he simply had the bad fortune to drink contaminated water in the original future but somehow avoided it in the 'good' future.

Why Wasn't Scrooge Attacked?

• If Scrooge was such a wealthy man, holed up all by himself in a dusty old house without servants, and had made himself so deeply hated by the substantial fraction of the city's population that owed him money, why wasn't he robbed and/or murdered, ages ago? He won't even pay for enough coal to keep his accountant's ink from freezing, so it doesn't seem likely he'd hire a security agency to keep an eye on his house, or shell out dues to a neighborhood vigilance committee. Never mind ghosts: you'd think some burglar would bust into his home or counting-house to lighten his future burden of cashbox-chains, or an irate debtor with nothing to lose would kick down his door and pound the old grouch into paste upon receiving their final eviction notice.
  • Scrooge is as stingy about spending money on his own comfort as he is about everything else, so his house doesn't really have much worth stealing — enough for a bit of easy opportunistic post-mortem looting by the servants who found his body, but not worth the greater trouble and risk of breaking in and burglarizing the place. As for his business, it isn't described in enough detail to say whether or not there would be cash or portable valuables on site. His money would be in the bank, which isn't an easy target.
  • Scrooge doesn't live in much of a place. He only has a few rooms in a hidden-away, back-alley building that's let out for other purposes as well. Not likely to attract burglars.
  • Scrooge's lack of comforts suggests that he isn't greedy so much as terrified of not having enough money, so security is probably the one thing he *would* spend money on.
  • Since his rooms are part of a larger building, perhaps one of the other tenants made arrangements to have the place watched.
  • Perhaps because he doesn't flaunt his wealth by spending it on anything, he just doesn't register as a good enough target for potential thieves.

Was it Seven Years Later?

• Was the "Christmas Yet to Come" Christmas Day 7 years after Marley's death on Christmas Eve?
  • Jacob Marley died 7 years prior to the events of A Christmas Carol, and the visions from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is supposed to happen 1 year after. So by the time Scrooge would have died, Marley would have already been dead for 8 years.

One Night or Three?

• Why does the story switch from Marley telling Scrooge to expect the spirits over the course of three nights to all the spirits arriving in one night?
  • Ultimately, this one's probably just a continuity error. Dickens' novels tend to be full of these little contradictions, as a result of the serialising process; his stories were commonly published over a period of months, even years, by which point in later chapters he'd forgotten details he'd set up in earlier chapters or changed his mind and hoped no one would notice. Presumably, he just wrote it in that frame of mind and didn't go back to edit the details. If we need a Watsonian explanation, then considering that the spirits take Scrooge on a journey through different times, there's clearly some kind of supernatural Timey-Wimey Ball stuff going on; could be that he was taken out of time somehow, experienced three nights of events from his subjective viewpoint, and then returned back to where he should have been right at the beginning.
    • Nah, this is no continuity error. Dickens makes it clear that Scrooge (and therefore, Dickens himself) is perfectly aware of the time leap. Scrooge says, "They can do anything they like," and that's all the explanation we need, because really, no one ought to be willing to suspend their disbelief that the Spirits can take Scrooge to all those places and times and yet not that they can deposit him back wherever they want to. Scrooge certainly doesn't.
  • Scrooge did ask for the Spirits to all come at once and be done with it...

Fred Doesn't Care That His Uncle Died?

• If Fred is such a great person and never gives up on Scrooge and just wants him to be in his life, why only one year after Fred is pretty unbothered by another rejection apparently not care at all his uncle died or attend his funerals or arrange anything? And why would Scrooge die without giving his money to anyone if Fred at least is a person in his life? Doesn't really fit with his good guy characterization. Was he somehow dead by that time too?
  • Rule of Drama, perhaps. If we readers are told that Fred is in mourning for some reason before we learn that Scrooge is the unloved dead man everyone's talking about, it will spoil the reveal. Of course it could also speak to just how low Scrooge had sunk in his final days: even Fred has given up on him.
  • For all we know, Fred might've moved out of London, gone traveling overseas, or emigrated prior to his uncle's death. He may have no clue the old man is even dead.
  • Remember that Fred inherited his uncle's wealth and offered Bob Cratchit help. So, it's obvious that he was aware that Scrooge died.
    • Is there any real indication that Fred inherited anything from his uncle? During the parlor scene with his guests, Fred clearly expressed that he had no expectation of seeing anything. He's just offering to help Bob because he's that kind of guy.
  • In the original story Fred does not appear personally in Scrooge's vision of the future. Scrooge only hears Bob Cratchit say that he met Fred in the street and that he offered what help he could to the Cratchit family, and they go on to imagine that he'll help Peter Cratchit find a job. Fred may very well have been in mourning at the time and he probably did attend Scrooge's funeral, and he may even have inherited some or all of Scrooge's money, it's just that Bob doesn't mention any of that in the conversation with his family. If he had then Scrooge would have figured out that he had died.
  • Despite Fred's best efforts, he and Scrooge are not close. He may be a bit upset if Scrooge died, but would anyone blame him if he didn't do more than sigh and wish the old codger's end had been a bit different?

Why Employ Bob?

• Since Scrooge is such a selfish skinflint, doesn't like people, and certainly doesn't like to give people days off, why is Bob Cratchit even in his employ? His maid/maids I could get; he's an old man who can't very well take care of his own property by himself, but since all Cratchit is doing is Bookkeeping, a job that even Scrooge should be able to handle by himself, why have Cratchit work under him? Is he a holdover from Marley's life?
  • Scrooge would not have been able to do his own bookkeeping. Before it was computerized bookkeeping was quite labor intensive — Bob would have been recording every business transaction into the ledger by hand, twice (the “double entry” of double-entry bookkeeping), and doing a lot of arithmetic by hand to balance the ledgers every month.
  • The fact that he keeps him but barely pays him suggests that Scrooge grudgingly has him on staff because he's not able to do everything himself. It's never said if he was hired when Jacob Marley was still alive, but he could have been a possible replacement; in that event, Scrooge would have been used to sharing the workload and given Bob the tasks he didn't want to do.

The Cratchit Family's Churchgoing Habits

• Why are Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim the only members of a family of eight who go to church on Christmas? Martha hadn't been excused from her apprenticeship for Christmas, and perhaps we could say that Mrs. Cratchit had to stay home to cook, but that still leaves Peter, Belinda, and the unnamed boy and girl unaccounted for (and they seem to be only nominally helping Mrs. Cratchit, at best). Not all families are particularly religious, but you would think that if it's something the Cratchits value, more than two of them would be attending.
  • We see that Bob takes it upon himself to bless Scrooge, while Mrs. Cratchit has no charitable thoughts to spare for him and will only give sarcastic, backhanded assent to the toast (and even then, only for the sake of marital peace). Maybe that difference in attitude is partially explained by him being an active churchgoer while she is not.

Why work for Scrooge, Bob?

• Bob is woefully overworked and underpaid. Why doesn't he seek employment elsewhere?
  • Victorian values. He feels he owes it to his master to give his all and support him, that is the Victorian class system at work. Scrooge may also refuse to give Bob a reference to a new employer, and that is a big thing in the time period.
  • There are plenty of real-life people who are overworked and underpaid. Maybe Bob just hasn't been able to find work anywhere else.
  • This is an easy question to ask here in the 21st century when we've been conditioned to understand that loyalty to an employer is no great value at all. In 19th century England, societal pressure counted for much, much more than it does today. It counted, in fact, so much with Bob, that he felt compelled to offer a toast to Scrooge in honor of Christmas Day as the "Founder of the Feast." It was the "proper" thing to do, in his eyes. One needed to observe the proprieties, or risk being shunned. Those proprieties involved serious risk for Bob if he decided to jump ship. This answer, by the way, also works equally well for the question above, to wit, why did that unfeeling bastard Scrooge decide to be OK with a paid holiday for Bob? Because being a greedy jerk in pursuit of money was not necessarily different from those he dealt with on 'Change, but not giving Christmas off when everyone else did would set him apart.

The growing Cratchit family

• Considering how badly off the Cratchit family is, why do they keep having children they can barely afford to raise?
  • Bob and his wife have a loving relationship and active sex life, obviously, but they do not have access to modern birth control. That is just the way of things, if they have a physical relationship in that time period then they are going to end up having a lot of kids. The upside is that as the kids grow up, they'll be able to gain employment and support their parents and family with their own incomes. There is no social safety net at the time, so children supporting their parents is the only way many elderly people can survive.
  • Having lots of kids was very common in that era, for all the reasons mentioned above. There are other reasons too. Some people felt that God decided when kids should be born, and any attempt to interfere with God's plan was considered sinful. Then there was the fact that kids so often died compared to the modern era, so if you wanted your family line to continue it was wise to have lots of kids to boost the odds of at least one survivor.

The Christmas of Christmas Carol

• As has been noted, Christmas in Britain had only been reintroduced to Great Britain recently in a Country that was neutral at best to the Holiday at the time of publication. In fact, the Novel itself is often seen as a major reason for the popularization of Christmas in Britain (and the United States). The novel itself appears to be set in the then present day of early Victorian London. So the question is, why are Bob Cratchit and his family celebrating Christmas? And why does he expect the day off for it? The majority of Britain isn't celebrating it at the time, treating it as more of a fad or a curiosity then a real holiday, so it's weird Cratchit is (plus the 3 unrelated groups like the miners and lighthouse crew) are celebrating it, unless they're Catholic, which they probably aren't (Fred celebrating it makes sense as he's young and, based on the party, treating it more as a fad too).
  • "Recently" is a bit of a relative term here; while the novel certainly helped establish the modern conceptions of Christmas in a prominent way, it didn't do so single-handedly, nor did Britain suddenly go from "Christmas? What's Christmas?" to "Yay Modern Christmas!" in 1842. Christmas has been celebrated in some form across the British Isles since at least the medieval period, which in turn drew upon older yuletide traditions and, after the Puritans ruined the fun in the seventeenth century, various Christmas traditions had been reviving in the UK since the eighteenth century (that is, for at least forty years before Dickens wrote his story, if not longer; the Georgians had spent a fair bit of time reviving various Christmas traditions as well, though theirs looked much different to how we celebrate it today). So while the novel certainly popularised the modern understandings and celebrations of what Christmas is, it wasn't a completely unheard-of obscurity or pure fad, and there were enough people celebrating the holiday to make it recognisable to the readers what was going on and what was being referred to. That said, there is some artistic license taken, and the novel is at least partly a nostalgic reflection of various yuletide celebrations that Dickens remembered from his childhood combined with those he felt were useful to create a sense of community and social cohesion. The novel is intended at least in part as a fantasy rather than a strictly accurate social document of holiday celebrations of the period, so needs to be read with that in mind.
  • Furthermore, the novel was in part written to encourage this kind of celebration (and discourage the kind of miserly nothing-but-work-and-making-profit attitudes like Scrooge's which were not uncommon at the time). Ergo, even if it wasn't strictly realistic, in keeping with the "it's-partly-a-fantasy" point made above Dickens is deliberately heightening and exaggerating the depictions of Christmas precisely so that he can point them out to the reader and go "See?! See?! Doesn't this seem like fun? Doesn't having one day off a year to do this sound like a good idea?"

Does helping Scrooge redeem Marley?

• Considering the entire theme of the story is about Scrooge redeeming himself for his past behaviour and mending his ways, it always seemed strange to me when adaptations do not address Marley's own fate. He clearly understands where he went wrong in life, and goes out of his way to help Scrooge and thus many other people. Does this get him out of whatever Hell he's in? Or is it like purgatory where it gets time off his sentence? With the themes of the story, it just feels profoundly wrong that Marley could help Scrooge and then be shoved right back into Hell, despite clearly trying to atone for his sins.
  • The message was "where there is life, there is still hope. When you are dead it is too late." That is Marley's punishment, not atonement. He had his chance, when he was alive. Scrooge has that chance, because he is alive, but he must take it now. He can't wait until he is dead to repent. That is because, then as is now, British Christianity (Dickens is preaching at a Church of England primary audience) really does lean into a mindset of saying you can repent on your deathbed or even after you die and just ignore the horrific suffering created all around you by your actions during your life as long as you repent later. Dickens is telling us, via Marley's horrible fate, that that is too damn late. You must be a better person while you are alive for it to count.
    • The message seems to be that one cannot affect life on earth once dead, no matter how much one wishes. But Marley says, of sitting near Scrooge as a ghost, "That is no light part of my penance." Marley is still able to atone, but what he can't do is perform any good works on earth for the living. So Scrooge can still repent and do penance once dead, as Marley and many others seem to be doing — it will just take until Judgment Day to work. In short, it is too late to do what the soul desires to do, which is help matters on earth, but it's not too late to repent and save one's soul.

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