The Themes of A Christmas Carol

2 Memory and Remembrance

One theme common to all Dickens's Christmas Books is the beneficial nature of memory. Dickens' first Christmas writing was "A Christmas Dinner", published in 1835 as "Scenes and Characters No. 10 Christmas Festivities" in Bell's Life in London (and later in Sketches by Boz as "A Christmas Dinner"). Dickens' theme, though he was then only in his early twenties, was already memory:

Do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire -- fill the glass and send round the song -- and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it off-hand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. Look on the merry faces of your children (if you have any) as they sit round the fire. One little seat may be empty; one slight form that gladdened the father's heart, and roused the mother's pride to look upon, may not be there. Dwell not upon the past; think not that one short year ago, the fair child now resolving into dust, sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its cheek, and the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye.

By reminding the reader not to remember, what Dickens cleverly incites are recollections of the past, both good and bad.

Later in life came "What Christmas Is as We Grow Older" published in 1851: We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom we often pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives, and merrily imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk, when we came to be old. His destined habitation in the City of the Dead received him in his prime. Shall he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance? Would his love have so excluded us? Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!

The Ghost of Christmas Past is the incarnation of Christmas memory, specifically Scrooge's memory. And like thoughts lost in recollection, the Ghost changes form, from second to second:

For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

And at the end of the sequence the Spirit of Time past seems to be all the memories of Scrooge in one: He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.

Memory elicits from Scrooge his first emotional response. In Scrooge's visitation to his school, although Scrooge denies it, there is a distinct tear:

"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that upon your cheek?"

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.

"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.

"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour -- "I could walk it blindfold."

"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years," observed the Ghost. "Let us go on."

Once reminded of his forgotten self, Scrooge cries again :

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

However, Scrooge's memories are not all painful. At the Fezziwig party, the narrator tells us that Scrooge acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. These happy memories, of course, connect with the present, especially the unhappy way Scrooge treats his own clerk.

Memory is incited by the senses. At the visit to his school Scrooge was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten. In the sequence with the Ghost of Christmas Present one of the senses that triggers a recollection is smell: there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods.

Another sense is hearing, especially music. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder' is a sentimental platitude, but who hasn't heard that special tune and immediately thought back to a person or event? In a visit to a ship far out to sea the narrator says: every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.

But music and its recollection has even greater powers. Scrooge hears a simple tune played by his nephew's wife and his mind is quickly return to his sister Fan:

Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley. Strange not to have listened to it for so many years.

Scrooge, like the Haunted Man in another Dickens Christmas story, is shown the benefit of painful memories. Even these must never be shut out. At the mourning of Tiny Tim, there is an understanding that his memory will help unite the family and make it stronger:

"I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim -- shall we -- or this first parting that there was among us."

"Never, father!" cried they all.

"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."

"No, never, father!" they all cried again.

"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God.

The past and memories in A Christmas Carol are never in isolation from either the present or the future. The Fezziwig memory makes Scrooge think of the present and his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and the memory of Tiny Tim is anticipated as, in the future, a way of bringing a family closer. So when Scrooge says he will live in past, present and future part of what he is saying is that memories shall never again be set aside and they will enrich the present and enhance his future. Scrooge renews the present, and the present in the future, through memory of the past.