The message of A Christmas Carol isn’t the same for everyone.
According to a friend of mine who’s a Carol expert, the emotional core of the story for Dickens’ own time wasn’t Scrooge’s redemption but the Cratchitt’s salvation: This decent, middle-class family averts a future in which Tim Cratchitt dies; instead, Tiny Tim lives and Bob Cratchitt finally receives decent treatment from his boss. Many Victorians stage versions dispensed with Scrooge entirely and focused on the Cratchitt family gathering to celebrate Christmas in spite of their meager resources.
That, of course, has changed. The core for most of us these days is the transformation of Ebeneezer Scrooge from a grasping, covetous skinflint into a decent, humane employer and supporter of worthy charities. Watching Albert Finney in the film Scrooge this weekend, I was struck by how Scrooge’s ruthless squeezing of the poor for every last penny still packs an emotional punch.
George Orwell said that Dickens was a moral reformer, not a systemic one: He didn’t suggest sweeping reforms of capitalism, simply called on capitalists to behave better (I have no idea if this is generally true, but it’s certainly true of this book). I think this is one reason the story keeps working: No matter how much the economic system changes, greed and callousness will always be part of it. That’s why free-marketeers are still criticizing the book more than a century after it came out, trying to show, for example, that the Cratchitts were spendthrifts who could easily have paid for Tim’s medical treatment if they’d managed their money better, and that the free market would undoubtedly have provided Cratchitt with a better job if he deserved one. It’s much harder to refute a call for human decency than it is to refute Marx.
For me, the emotional hook is Scrooge’s redemption, his regaining his ability to care for others. As I’ve said in previous posts, emotionally withdrawn characters interest me in my own writing (particularly as they struggle to reconnect) so it’s not surprising that’s what I feel the keenest about — particularly when the spirits force Scrooge to watch all the times he turned away from people he should have loved (I don’t think any of us would enjoy looking at all the ways we’ve screwed up our life).
This aspect also explains some of the story’s staying power because it can apply to areas other than money. As Elizabeth “Ebbie” Scrooge in Lifetime’s Ebbie, Susan Lucci’s fatal flaw isn’t greed per se but her willingness to climb the ladder of success regardless of who gets hurt; in “A Valentine Carol,” Emma Caulfield’s Ally Sims (presumably a reference to the great Alistair Sim’s turn as Scrooge) has to learn to marry for love and not wealth.
There’s a lot more to the story — sitcoms have mined Dickens for years by having one of the regulars share Scrooge’s hatred for Christmas — but I suppose that proves my point that the Carol will be with us for a long time to come.

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