Give This to Your GCSE Child – There's A Christmas Carol Contexty Exam Stuff in Here

Almost every GCSE student in England (not every single one—some schools choose different texts, although not many) has the absolute pleasure of studying A Christmas Carol as part of their English Literature GCSE.

One of the things that helps students achieve the highest marks is having a good understanding of the context in which this wonderful novella was written.

This is where my little ramblings might help.

Thrust this into the hands of your unwilling child and encourage them to make notes. You can also have a little read yourself, just to sound like the smug and highly knowledgeable person that you are.

It's Christmas... Time for Dickens (and the Muppets!)

At about this time of year, it's time to grab yourself a nice glass of wine or Shloer (delete as appropriate!) and sit down to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol with your nearest and dearest.

Nothing truly says Christmas like a horrible old miser meeting a collection of ghosts before embarking on a frightening journey of redemption that ends with him buying an enormous turkey for every Tom, Dick and... Bob Cratchit.

Everyone knows Ebenezer Scrooge.

The name has become so famous that someone can still be called "a Scrooge" simply for being reluctant to spend money.

Interestingly, the name Ebenezer is originally Hebrew and means "stone of help." While it certainly doesn't describe the man we meet at the beginning of the novella, it does rather suit the Scrooge we leave at the end.

Dickens Wrote It Surprisingly Quickly

Dickens actually wrote A Christmas Carol in a bit of a rush.

Baby number five was on the way, and he completed the novella in just six weeks.

Despite being written so quickly, it became one of the defining Christmas stories ever written.

Christmas Was Changing

A Christmas Carol perfectly captures the spirit of Christmas.

Interestingly, Dickens wrote it at exactly the time Christmas itself was changing.

By the early nineteenth century, Christmas had become something of a quieter affair compared with the huge Medieval celebrations of centuries earlier, where Twelfth Night was often the biggest event.

Victorian Britain was beginning to reinvent Christmas.

Prince Albert helped popularise German traditions such as:

• Christmas trees

• Christmas puddings

• Gift giving

The traditional Christmas feast also became more established.

In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge famously orders the biggest turkey in the poulterer's shop for the Cratchit family, although many poorer families would have been far more likely to eat rabbit or whatever they could afford.

The Victorian Christmas Takes Shape

Other developments in Victorian society also helped shape the Christmas we recognise today.

For example:

• The expansion of the postal service made Christmas cards affordable.

• The railways made travelling home for Christmas much easier.

• Improvements to working conditions gradually allowed more people time off to spend with family.

It's a classic "chicken and egg" situation.

Dickens embraced these emerging Victorian traditions and built them into his story. In turn, A Christmas Carol became one of the reasons those traditions continued for generations afterwards.

Dickens and Poverty

Alongside Christmas itself, one of the novella's biggest themes is poverty.

Greed simply represents the opposite side of the same coin.

This theme was deeply personal to Dickens.

His own father was imprisoned in Marshalsea Debtors' Prison, forcing the young Dickens to leave school at just twelve years old to work in a blacking factory, sticking labels onto bottles for six shillings a week.

The experience stayed with him for the rest of his life.

In fact, Marshalsea even appears later in Little Dorrit.

Poverty Throughout Dickens' Work

Poverty and social injustice appear repeatedly throughout Dickens' novels, including:

• Little Dorrit

• Hard Times

• Oliver Twist

• Great Expectations

As an adult, Dickens travelled throughout industrial Britain, witnessing the terrible conditions experienced by many of the poor.

The Ragged Schools for destitute children even became an important source of inspiration while writing Oliver Twist.

Poverty in A Christmas Carol

The same concerns appear throughout A Christmas Carol.

The Cratchit family become symbols of love, generosity and goodness despite living in poverty.

Scrooge, however, fears poverty above almost everything else.

His former fiancée explains it perfectly:

"You fear the world too much... all your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach."

In other words, Scrooge's fear of becoming poor has gradually replaced every other ambition in his life.

Ignorance and Want

One of the novella's most powerful moments comes when the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the two children hidden beneath his robes:

Ignorance and Want.

When Scrooge expresses concern for them, the Ghost explains that they are the children of mankind.

They symbolise the poverty, neglect and inequality that society itself has created.

Like much of Dickens' writing, this isn't simply storytelling—it is social criticism.

Dickens' Lasting Message

Perhaps that's why A Christmas Carol has remained so popular for nearly two centuries.

It isn't simply a ghost story.

It's a story about generosity, compassion, responsibility and the belief that people can change.

And perhaps that's why we still return to it every Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Perhaps spend time with family playing a few parlour games, just as Dickens himself regularly did.

If you feel so minded, throw open your windows, declare yourself a changed person and offer to buy someone nearby some overpriced poultry.

Or perhaps, as you sit around the Christmas dinner table, simply look at those around you and say:

"God bless us, every one."

Dickens would be very proud.