A Christmas Carol
Two Christmas stories are the most famous stories of our lifetime. One, of course, is the birth of our savior, found in Luke, chapter two. No story will ever compare in greatness and glory to any other story at Christmas. However, there is another famous story that millions of people recollect and go over again with family and loved ones. That story is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
How and why did Charles Dickens write that beloved story? Among the writing community, there is a saying that writers write what they know. This saying is certainly true of Charles Dickens. He wrote A Christmas Carol to bring awareness to the wage gap during a time in London called the Hungry Forties.
Charles Dickens grew up in a lower-middle-class family. When Dickens was only twelve, his father was arrested because he could not pay off a debt. Charles had to drop out of school and work at a shoe polish factory to help pay the debt his father owed. There, he worked long hours alongside other children. Dickens included many facts from his life and translated them into his stories. Most of Dickens's inspiration came from empathy for struggling people (especially children) during the Victorian Era due to his experiences working endlessly in workhouses when he was young.
Another similarity to Dickens's life in the Christmas Carol was the character of Tiny Tim. His character was based on Dickens's nephew, Harry. Harry was a sick little boy like Tiny, yet he did not survive his illness like his fictional counterpart.
The Corn Laws were passed in England to stop the import of corn; therefore, the cost of food increased and depressed the domestic market for manufactured goods because people spent the bulk of their earnings on food rather than commodities. The Corn Laws also caused great distress among the working classes in the towns. These people could not grow their food and had to pay high prices to stay alive.
One especially egregious policy in England at that time was the use of children in the workforce. Children as young as four and five years old were thrust into long hours of employment to help bear the family's financial burden.
In the Victorian Era, English children were considered cheap labor, and the demand was high for many types of jobs, including mining, factory work, street sweepers, clothing and hat makers, chimney sweeps, farming, textile mills, servants, and even prostitution.
The hours were excruciatingly long for these children. They worked in factories 14 to 18 hours a day. People used the younger children as Chimney sweeps because of their small size. After cleaning a chimney, a child would come out covered with soot all over his or her body. The child's body, bleeding, proceeded to be washed off with salt water and sent up another chimney.
Here is a picture of one such child:
How and why adults could be so callused toward the souls of these precious children is beyond comprehension, and yet we know that all over the world, children are bought and sold today for the same reasons.
Charles Dickens knew he could write a fiction story addressing the severe problems of the gap between the very rich and the lowly impoverished. At first, he thought of writing a journalistic pamphlet about all of these conditons and hardships and circulate the infomation all over England. However, he realized a fictionalized story would penetrate the hardness of the heart and cause a more significant stirring than just a pamphlet.
In the next Substack of this series, we will look at how Dickens observations and his writing to details are used to penetrate the heart.