Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol "became popular in America soon after its publication and has remained popular to the present, making it the most widely read literary statement on Christian charity."¹ However, though Dickens' 1843 holiday parable is perhaps the most famous and popular English-language Christmas tale ever published, many symbols, characters, and religious figures that we closely associate with Christmas are noticeably absent from A Christmas Carol. For example, Christmas trees were so new to 19th century England that Dickens does not once mention them. Nor does Dickens' holiday tale ever refer to Santa Claus or Christmas stockings. And while the word "God" is used frequently throughout the story — with the principal positive invocation being Tiny Tim's wish that "God bless us, everyone" — Dickens' setting does not feature crèches, shepherds, or kings bearing gifts. Nor do the words "Jesus," "Christ," "Mary," or "Joseph" appear anywhere in the text.

The absence of traditional religious themes in A Christmas Carol becomes even more striking when the pagan aspects of Dickens' tale are examined more closely. The original title of the story, now rarely mentioned, was A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Indeed, the other-worldly characters who appear in the story are not religious figures (there is no visitation from Christ or the Virgin Mary); rather, they are the "ghosts" and "spirits" of Jacob Marley and the decidedly unbiblical ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. These supernatural visitors do not describe a recognizable Christian, theological afterlife. And while Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit are praised for their goodness, the person who emerges in the end as the most generous giver of gifts is none other than the very unreligious, but newly transformed Ebenezer Scrooge, who was brought to a love of Christmas not by Christ, but by specters from the netherworld who are uninformed by Christian theology.

Learn more about our work on religion and belief >>