Charles Dickens and the Christmas Ghost Story

What do you want for Christmas? How about something scary? That might seem peculiar to
holiday revelers today, but in Victorian England, the Christmas ghost story was a cherished
ritual of the season. Families would gather around the fire on Christmas Eve and listen to
terrifying tales. (Hey, it could be worse—consider spending the festive occasion arguing with
relatives about the election results.)

Charles Dickens, for his part, may not have invented the concept, but he did more than anyone
to popularize it. His first excursion into the scary Yuletide story in chapter 28 of The
Pickwick Papers (1836) established an appealing formula—one that even the author himself
imitated seven years later with A Christmas Carol. Yet today, long after the Christmas ghost
story has disappeared from view, only Dickens's short novel has survived to remind us
of this once flourishing sub-genre.

This mostly forgotten tradition exerted a
powerful impact on the evolution of horror
fiction. M.R. James’s Ghost Stories of an
Antiquary (1904), one of the most popular
genre works of its era, is a compilation of
tales he read aloud to guests on Christmas
Eve. In describing his 1898 short novel
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James noted
that "it was gruesome, as, on Christmas
Eve in an old house, a strange tale should
essentially be." Even H.P. Lovecraft set his
short story "The Festival" at Christmas time,
and as late as 1982 Canadian author
Robertson Davies published a collection
of ghost tales, High Spirits, that he had
written to entertain students at an annual
Christmas party during his tenure as Master
of Massey College at the University of Toronto.

But Dickens did something even more
antiquated and charmingly out-of-date
with A Christmas Carol. He managed to combine horror and sentimentality, and create a
terrifying tale that also conveyed an uplifting moral message. You won’t find that anywhere in
Poe, Lovecraft, or most other purveyors of horror fiction. Perhaps Richard Matheson came the
closest with his unclassifiable novel What Dreams May Come, but he still couldn't capture the
wistful nostalgic tone that Dickens somehow managed to evoke in his ghost story. For better or
worse, Dickens created a type of gruesome yet beguiling narrative that no one even aspires to
write in the current day.

In many ways, Dickens was merely returning to the earliest origins of the ghost story. The
oldest examples of these narratives are found in myths about a journey to the underworld, and
they have been told everywhere in the world. But when an ancient hero journeyed to Hades, it
was almost always for noble purposes, as part of a higher calling. In traditional societies, these
stories may have frightened some listeners, but the aim was never merely to scare. The tales
also served as sources of communal wisdom, cherished tradition and shared values. In other
words, Dickens wasn't that far removed from the shamanic belief systems and Orphic
worldview of ancient and folkloric storytellers.

Many readers nowadays probably dismiss A Christmas Carol as too sentimental for prevailing
sensibilities and tastes. But I find both the premise and the execution compelling, and the plot
even more plausible—at least from the standpoint of individual psychology—than most of the
canonic stories in the genre. After all, wouldn't you want to learn something from any ghosts
you encountered? Wouldn't you ask questions, much like Scrooge does in these pages?
Wouldn't the experience change your life and behavior in the aftermath? Perhaps some people
would run away from a spook, but I suspect that many would follow Dickens’s lead and stay
around for a little conversation.

Yes, I like this Dickensian approach to the subject. If I
met a ghost, I’d like to benefit from the encounter. There's
a pleasing karmic balance in the notion that scary encounters
also bring with them compensating gifts. If Newton had
constructed a law of horror fiction, he would have insisted
that every frightening action inspires an equal reaction. That
is the logic of A Christmas Carol.

Is the plot of this story still familiar to most people, even those
who don’t pick up 19th century literature? Certainly the
character of Scrooge must still have a near universal name
recognition—although who know how many first encountered
the name via Donald Duck’s uncle, the stingy Scrooge McDuck?
The name has even turned into a generic term for a
curmudgeonly miser.

Yet the name could just as easily symbolize the opposite. At the
end of this story, Ebenezer Scrooge is transformed by the visions
offered through the intermediation of his three spectral visitors. The Ghost of Christmas Past
has shown him long-forgotten scenes from Scrooge’s own youth. The Ghost of Christmas
Present has given him a glimpse the current-day misery caused by Scrooge’s cold-hearted
ways. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has revealed the circumstances of the
miser's forthcoming death, and the sorry legacy he will leave to the world. Scrooge is shaken to
his very soul by these sights, and implores the final ghost for the opportunity to alter this
looming destiny.

So why doesn't the name Scrooge signify a morally transformed person? Why is our
protagonist remembered for who he was, not what he became? Can I launch a Scrooge image
rehabilitation campaign? Can we get him a statue or at least put his image on a Christmas
stamp?

I note, in passing, that charitable donations rose in
England after the publication of Dickens’s book.
"More extensive kindness has been dispensed to
those who are in want at the present season than
at any preceding one,” announced Gentleman’s
Magazine in 1844. There are many examples from
other countries of readers inspired to extraordinary
acts of generosity on the basis of this short novel.

I suspect that Dickens would have taken more pride in these socioeconomic results than in the
purely literary legacy of his work. When he founded the journal Household Words, he wrote to
Elizabeth Gaskell that its purpose was “the raising up of those that are down and the general
improvement of our social condition.” He lived up to that promise in his own work, even
courting the disapproval of those who reject or ridicule didactic fiction. Dickens saw things
differently from them. He wanted his books to have an impact that continued long after the
readers put them back on the shelf. With regard to A Christmas Carol, he wrote of his
audience: "May it haunt their houses pleasantly."

Perhaps the notion of a ghost who delivers revelations and second chances would fall flat in
the present day. I can’t imagine a literary agent even agreeing to read the manuscript, or
Hollywood studios bidding for film rights. But I am convinced we could still learn something
from this old story—and I’m not talking about how to scare youngsters around a fire on
Christmas Eve. Maybe you should even buy a few copies and give them (as Christmas gifts, of
course!) to the Scrooges in your life.

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from
Basic Books.

Publication Date: December 23, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler

Week 28
D emons by Daylight
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 29
T he Complete Short Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Week 30
P et Sematary
by Stephen King

Week 31
O ur Lady of Darkness
by Fritz Leiber

Week 32
G rendel
by John Gardner

Week 33
W hite is for Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi

Week 34
T he Wasp Factory
by Iain Banks

Week 35
K ing Kong
by Edgar Wallace

Week 36
T he Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole

Week 37
The J ohn Silence Stories
by Algernon Blackwood

Week 38
The M agic Toyshop
by Angela Carter

Week 39
The O ther
by Thomas Tryon

Week 40
N ever Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Week 41
G host Story
by Peter Straub

Week 42
J ohn Dies at the End
by David Wong

Week 43
T he Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen

Week 44
The C ipher
by Kathe Koja

Week 45
L et the Right One In
by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Week 46
T he Nameless
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 47
Horrorstör
by Grady Hendrix

Week 48
S trangers
by Taichi Yamada

Week 49
W orld War Z
by Max Brooks

Week 50
J urassic Park
by Michael Crichton

Week 51
H eart-Shaped Box
by Joe Hill

Week 52
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens