YMMV / A Christmas Carol

• Accidental Innuendo: The narration during the Christmas Past segment makes reference to "an ass laden with wood". Merry Christmas indeed!
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Jacob Marley's character, particularly pre-death, is open to a lot of interpretation, as all that's told is Scrooge was as bad as he was at the time of Marley's death. Some adaptations make him more heroic, while others more villainous, and others present them as relatively equal. Adaptations are also split on whether he's in hell or a purgatory-like state.
  • The Ghosts, their personalities, and what they hope to accomplish can vary between adaptations, with some more benevolent than others.
  • Were Scrooge and Marley only business partners who cared little for each other, or were they closer friends than Scrooge cared to admit before Marley's ghostly visit? Was Scrooge's refusal to remove Marley's name from the signage really based on stinginess, or did he keep it for more sentimental reasons and only used the expense as an excuse?
  • Why did Scrooge's father neglect him in his childhood? Was he a cold-hearted workaholic businessman, like Scrooge himself? Was he plagued by financial troubles, like Charles Dickens' own father? Was he depressed and embittered by the death of his wife, as several adaptations suggest (the book never says if his wife was alive or not)? Since he never appears on the page, it's open to speculation.
  • Belle and the young Scrooge can both be subject to this in their breakup scene. Was Scrooge already succumbing to ice-cold greed, or was he only concerned with money to provide for Belle, with his true Face–Heel Turn only taking place because she left him? Was Belle an admirable young woman who knew what really mattered in life and was truly neglected and wronged by Scrooge, or was she self-absorbed and unable to appreciate that Scrooge's financial ambitions were for her sake? Which one was really the victim, or else did Both Sides Have a Point?
  • Is Scrooge even Christian? It's not stated anywhere in the book, and the story could just as easily be read as a metaphor for a Greedy Jew converting to Christianity.
    • Ebenezer is actually a Hebrew name, so this theory might have some weight to it.
    • There is a theory Scrooge may have been a Puritan.
    • Some adaptations do feature Scrooge going to a church in the end, but it's still ambiguous.
    • The book itself describes Scrooge as going to church, but only after his "conversion", shortly before he visits his nephew.
    • That said, in his childhood, his sister does say that they'll be together "all the Christmas long," implying that their family celebrated the holiday.
  • How rich or poor is Fred? Scrooge describes him as "poor", but because he's rich and greedy, he might just have a skewed perception on what poverty is. Fred seems to be better off than the Cratchits at least, and he's able to help those who are poorer than him.
  • Was Scrooge just a greedy jerk, or did he live through the Napoleonic Wars and is thus stingy due to not wanting to become poor again?
  • Belle is seen with a baby seven years ago — does this mean Scrooge is not that old but he's just malnourished and suffering from the cold weather and lack of medical care due to his scrimping, or that Belle is younger than Scrooge?
  • Were the ghosts real, or was Scrooge hallucinating? If he was, was it food poisoning like he thought, or dementia?
• Anvilicious: Value the people in your life, not the amount of money you have in the bank. If you have the latter, it is your moral imperative to value the former. This lesson is repeated to Scrooge and hammered into his head by all of the spirits, from the Jacob Marley Warning he experiences first to seeing his name on a grave at the end.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Scrooge doesn't say "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?". The actual dialogue is as follows:
  Scrooge: Are there no prisons?
  Unnamed Gentleman: Plenty of prisons.
  Scrooge: And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?
  Gentleman: They are. Still, I wish I could say they were not.
  • However, the more well-known version of the line is said, verbatim, by the Ghost of Christmas Present as a taunt to Scrooge later.
  • Scrooge says, "Bah! Humbug!" (two distinct sentences), not "Bah humbug!" It's also not his Character Catchphrase as many seem to think, only being said in one scene.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The ghostly hearse Scrooge meets on the stairs in his home is a fairly random event, isn't connected with other characters (even the other ghosts), and is never mentioned after it appears. For these reasons, most adaptations don't include it.
  • Young Scrooge's book-reading causes the characters to manifest from his imagination, and they're described as if they're really in the schoolhouse around Young Scrooge, including Ali Baba and Robinson Crusoe. They don't have any bearing on the plot, and are never mentioned again. While the book-reading is left in sometimes, the animated characters in Scrooge's mind are usually taken out.
  • When Scrooge first gets a good look at the Ghost of Christmas Past, it starts shifting its form, first losing an arm and then a leg, then suddenly growing twenty legs, then losing its entire body except for two of its legs, and then transforming into a floating head with no body. None of the other spirits are ever given descriptions remotely this strange, and it's never explained or mentioned again.
• Broken Base: There's a divide between fans who want A Christmas Carol adaptations to closely follow the book and are angered when they deviate, fans who think following the book too closely leaves little room for creativity and are interested in the uniqueness adaptations bring, and fans who are in-between and like adaptations being close but not rigidly compliant.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: In the "Yet to Come" sequence, it's pretty easy to figure out that the man whose death everyone is celebrating is Scrooge himself, considering that Scrooge keeps noting how the comments everyone makes about the dead man could be applied to himself, while also wondering why he can't find his own future version anywhere. The fact that the ghost who shows it to Scrooge is described in terms mirroring the traditional portrayal of The Grim Reaper makes it even less surprising when the name Scrooge reveals on the grave is his own. A few of the many adaptations of this novel get around this by having Scrooge figure out the dead man's identity on his own, but go into denial about it and/or insist that the events of the future can still be changed.
• Catharsis Factor: Scrooge having his "decrease the surplus population" remarks thrown back at him by the Present Ghost is definitely something the old miser deserved.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Many believe that Scrooge was outright crooked and corrupt before he was visited by the spirits. But the narration specifically denies Scrooge is anything of the sort, saying that Scrooge was as good as his word even before his Heel–Face Turn. This is to the benefit of the story's themes: by making it clear that Scrooge fulfills his legal obligations and doesn't break the law, Dickens seeks to drive home the point that the issues discussed in the book are not just personal, but societal.
  • Quite a few people think that Fan and Ebenezer's mother died when they were young, possibly even while giving birth to one of them. While this is hinted at or even explicitly stated in some adaptations, the original text gives no indication as to what's happened to the mother. Similarly, Fan's death isn't explicitly a Death by Childbirth; that's just something adaptations sometimes add, with the text itself again giving no indication as to how she died.
  • The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is often portrayed as a skeleton in a cloak. While we never see its actual face, the spirit is described in the book as having "a pale, gaunt hand", suggesting that its hand did have skin on it, it was just pale and thin.
  • It's widely believed that Bob Cratchit had to beg Scrooge to get Christmas Day off. While this is true in some adaptations, Scrooge in the original novel agrees to give Cratchit the day off as soon as he asks; it's just that Scrooge really isn't happy about it. Scrooge starts ranting that giving everyone Christmas Day off is "a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December" but nonetheless agrees right away.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Some readers gloss over Scrooge's actions pre-reformation, claiming he's just trying to do his job or is right to hoard his money. This ignores the fact that it's said he's an unusually merciless creditor, doesn't even spend his money on himself, and pays Bob Cratchit a pittance when he has six children to provide for. And his response to claims that the poor will die if Scrooge doesn't contribute to get them off the streets and away from the poorhouses is that they should hurry up and do it to "decrease the surplus population". That's not to mention how cold and dismissive he is to his nephew, who tries as hard as he can to be friendly to him.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dick Wilkins, one of Scrooge's fellow apprentices in the past, occasionally gets focus because both men were fond of one another.
  • Mr. Topper, a guest at Fred's party, is focused on in many adaptations for his womanizing ways, handsomeness, and interest in one female guest specifically.
• Fair for Its Day: Back at the time Dickens wrote this, it was considered highly progressive as it showed the audience that they are obligated to help disabled people to survive and that the idea that people with disabilities should be killed or allowed to die was heartless. However, some disability rights activists today take issue with the portrayal of Tiny Tim, as he exists solely to be pious, good, and elicit pity from Scrooge and the audience, despite the fact that poverty was the primary reason for his helplessness and disability.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Many fanfics, and some adaptations, tend to revolve around freeing Jacob Marley of his chains or setting Scrooge up with Belle after his reformation, usually by having her husband die. Other common fics have Scrooge/Marley as a pairing, in life or after death.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Jacob Marley being dead to begin with, and conspicuously absent from what Scrooge sees of his own past in the book, leaves a lot of room for writers to explore his character, his past, and how he met Scrooge. There's also the matter of how he procured his chance to save Scrooge.
  • Since the flashback showing Belle with her husband and children takes place seven years before the main action, the possibility remains that Belle's husband might have died since then, giving Scrooge the opportunity to find and reconcile with her.
• Fan Wank: Much ink has been shed over the decades about some of the details Dickens left out. What exactly Scrooge does for a living (Money-lender? Landlord?) is one. What exactly is wrong with Tiny Tim (Polio? Rickets? Spinal tuberculosis? Unspecified kidney disease?) is another.
• Genius Bonus: Christmas Present's appearance is heavily modeled after the traditional folklore appearance of Father Christmas.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The scenes of people mocking and celebrating Scrooge's death in his Bad Future. Similar sentiments were expressed, especially in Scotland and North England, in some circles when Margaret Thatcher died.
  • Scrooge's nasty proclamation that the surplus population should die would become this when the British government's response to the Irish Potato Famine was, in part, blocking aid to the starving Irish out of a belief of Malthusian population pressure.
  • Scrooge's infamous suggestion that the poor and homeless be put in prisons or workhouses—which when it's repeated to him, he suffers a Heel Realization. In 2017 as the homeless crisis reached its peak, some British and Irish figures suggested housing the homeless in prisons—and others were quick to point out the comparisons.
  • The real-life inspiration for Tiny Tim, Dickens' nephew Henry Burnett Jr., was still alive when the book was published, but ultimately died at age 10.
  • The death of Scrooge's sister Fan, who was presumably named after Dickens' own sister Fanny, the mother of the aforementioned Henry Burnett Jr. Like her son, she was still alive when the book was published, but died of tuberculosis 5 years later at age 38.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: During his trek through Christmases past, Scrooge suddenly wishes he had a daughter like Belle's ("... when he thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his life..."). It took almost 200 years, but someone eventually granted his wish to another Scrooge.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Since Ebenezer's nephew is an important character, yes, there is more than one instance where the hero is referred to or addressed as "Uncle Scrooge".^note Not quite that hilarious since Scrooge McDuck was named after Ebenezer Scrooge.
• Ho Yay:
  • Scrooge and Jacob Marley were business partners for many years, Scrooge lives in what used to be Marley's house, Marley visits him to save his soul even though he can no longer do anything for himself, and Scrooge mentions he was always a good friend to him and sincerely thanks him once the visits are over. Adaptations and fan works have taken this and run with it.
  • Scrooge and Dick Wilkins were very fond of one another in the past, with Scrooge remarking he was like a shadow to him.
• Iron Woobie: Bob Cratchit works a job he hates for very little money, all so he can provide for his family. He still remains good-hearted and is a loving husband and father despite everything.
• It Was His Sled:
  • It's supposed to be a twist that the vision by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes place after Scrooge's death, but thanks to how ubiquitous the tale is, virtually nobody is surprised to learn this. Even if one hears the story completely fresh, it's not hard to figure it out ahead of time since all the other visions took place in Scrooge's life, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is described in terms meant to invoke the image of the Grim Reaper, and Scrooge keeps remarking how his future self doesn't appear in any of the visions. Naturally, several adaptations make it blatant to the audience that the dead man in the future sequence is Scrooge, with only Scrooge himself failing to realize it (or trying to deny it) until they come to his grave.
  • Nearly everyone knows about Scrooge's Heel–Face Turn in the end, and that Tiny Tim doesn't die after all.
• Jerkass Woobie: Scrooge. The Jerkass part is at the forefront for the first act of the story. Then Christmas Past happens and you see just how tragic his backstory is.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Scrooge never does anything criminal or particularly unethical in his business practices, he's just a stingy and uncaring man. Nevertheless, there's little sympathy for Scrooge or anger towards actual criminals when (in the reveal of his future) his cleaning woman and undertaker steal his belongings and pawn them to Old Joe, a crooked fence
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Bah, humbug" has become shorthand for someone being like Scrooge and/or hating the holidays. The expression is so popular it remains in use even though the word "humbug" has long since left English vernacular.^note The word means "fraud" and/or "nonsense". Effectively, it's responding to "Merry Christmas" with, "Humph. What garbage".
  • "Merry Christmas". While this story didn't invent the phrase—that goes back to the 16th century—it did help popularize it. Beforehand, "Happy Christmas" tended to be used more often, since "merry" implied drunkenness.
  • "Scrooge" has become a euphemism for a stingy, cold-hearted person, as well as a miser.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Thanks to Common Knowledge the story of Scrooge is often shorthand for moralists about pushing for their own views. However they often forget Dickens' direct criticism of Moral Guardians who act for the "good" but really are just out to push their own prejudices. Scrooge is taken to task for being so selfish he wouldn't even consider helping the poor even though he could at little cost to him because they felt beneath him. This has been cheered on by people who are just as guilty of this type of thinking, only with a different flavor of prejudice.
  • This story has been touted by some as a tale of how money and capitalism are evil... except that Scrooge wasn't bad for being rich, but because he was a stingy miser. At the end of the tale he doesn't stop being rich, he just starts being generous with people.
• Newer Than They Think: As stated in the description, more than a few Christmas traditions were inspired by or received a wider audience because of this story.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Scrooge's plea to Marley's ghost about having all three spirits at once and getting it over with may seem like a bit of modern snark, but this is straight from Dickens.
  • The notion of others thinking Scrooge has gone crazy on Christmas Day onward may seem like a modern subversion, but the book has Bob Cratchit's first reaction to Scrooge giving him a raise be the thought that he should knock his boss out and call the loony bin.
  • The entire plot itself has a forerunner in Dickens's earlier short story The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton from The Pickwick Papers: the story of a mean gravedigger who, on Christmas Eve, is kidnapped by goblins and shown visions of other people's lives, including a poor family's meager yet merry Christmas dinner sadly followed by the death of their youngest son, which changes him for the better.
• One-Scene Wonder: Well, technically she's in two scenes, though we really only get a sense of her character in the first. We first see Ebenezer's former fiancée Belle as she's made up her mind to break off the engagement (though adaptations like to show her at Fezziwig's party, the novel never mentions her there). But in this scene, she's shown to be intelligent, insightful, and strong-willed, able to see what Ebenezer is becoming, and why ("You fear the world too much"). She's given it a lot of thought even though it pains her to think of the change in the man she once loved, but she knows both her own mind and his well enough to realize that they are no longer suited for each other. In the scene immediately following, we see she chose wisely...she is now Happily Married with a loving brood of children.
• Stoic Woobie: Fred's mother died young, possibly in childbirth and his only living relative keeps rebuffing his advances ("I want nothing from you, I ask nothing of you; why can we not be friends?"), but he remains a Perpetual Smiler nonetheless.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: This is a story about a grouch overcoming his cynical greed and learning to love his fellow man.
• Tear Dryer: After seeing the horrific Bad Future where Scrooge dies alone and unloved, Scrooge changing his ways and showing kindness to his clerk and nephew is moving to say the least.
• Values Dissonance: Both Bob Cratchit's and Fred’s wives express very little patience for Scrooge while their husbands never give up on trying to befriend him. Considering how the story ends, it’s implied that the latter were right to do so. The idea of not showing kindness to someone who mistreats you is an idea that has become more accepted in the 21st century. Christianity has lost some popularity in the western world and the “turning of the other cheek” that was seen as virtuous in Dickens’ time is now seen as the unhelpful encouragement of bad behavior.
• Values Resonance: Part of the reason why this story continues to be adapted to this very day. The message of the true meaning of Christmas being about how one spends their life, not their money, might be more relevant in these recessionary times more than ever. The story's advocacy for the poor and condemnation of miserly apathy also remains relevant as problems like that persist.
• The Woobie: Tiny Tim isn't even ten years old, and already crippled and doomed to die within one year due to his illness. Scrooge's Heel Realization is even started with seeing how Tim is The Pollyanna despite his circumstances.

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