A Christmas Carol — Summary & Analysis
by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas on December 19, 1843 — and it sold out its first edition of 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve. One of the best-loved works in all of English literature, this short novel (Dickens called it a novella in five "Staves") tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a cold-hearted London moneylender whose overnight transformation from miser to benefactor has defined our understanding of Christmas generosity for nearly two centuries.
The World Scrooge Keeps at Arm's Length
On Christmas Eve, Scrooge sits in his frigid counting house, refusing to spend a coal on warming his underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit. When his cheerful nephew Fred arrives with a Christmas dinner invitation, Scrooge dismisses the holiday as "humbug." He waves away two charity collectors seeking donations for the poor with a callous question: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" Dickens plants these opening scenes deliberately — Victorian England was scarred by brutal poverty, and Scrooge's indifference was not uncommon among the prosperous merchant class.
Marley's Warning
That night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley — condemned to wander the earth dragging the chains he forged in life through greed and selfishness. Marley warns Scrooge that three spirits will visit him over the coming hours. Without their intervention, Scrooge faces Marley's fate, or worse. The imagery of the chains — each link a cash box, key, padlock, ledger, or deed — is among Dickens's most famous inventions, a physical manifestation of moral debt.
The Ghost of Christmas Past
The first spirit, a strange flickering figure representing memory, leads Scrooge back through his own history. He witnesses his lonely childhood at boarding school, abandoned by his family during the holidays. He watches his joyful apprenticeship under the warm-hearted merchant Fezziwig, whose simple generosity toward his employees cost little but meant everything. Most painfully, Scrooge watches himself lose Belle, the woman he loved, as his obsession with wealth crowded out every other feeling. These scenes make the point quietly but powerfully: Scrooge was not always hard. He chose to become so.
The Ghost of Christmas Present
A robed giant bearing a torch arrives next, showing Scrooge Christmas as it is being celebrated across London on that very night. In a modest Camden Town row house, Bob Cratchit's family gathers around a meager goose with homemade Christmas pudding, led in gratitude by Cratchit himself. The youngest Cratchit, Tiny Tim, walks with a crutch and is visibly ill. When Scrooge asks whether Tim will survive, the spirit echoes back Scrooge's own words: "If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." The rebuke lands exactly as Dickens intends. The spirit also shows Scrooge two emaciated children hiding beneath his robe — Ignorance and Want — warning that Ignorance is the more dangerous of the two.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
The third and most ominous spirit, a silent dark-robed phantom, shows Scrooge scenes of London's future. Street traders cheerfully barter stolen goods: the bed-curtains and shirt of a dead man, stripped while the body was still warm. The Cratchit household sits in quiet grief — Tiny Tim has died. Scrooge is led to a neglected grave in a churchyard, its stone bearing his own name. The vision shocks him at last into the full weight of the life he has led.
Christmas Morning and Transformation
Scrooge wakes on Christmas morning laughing, weeping, trembling — and alive to possibility for the first time in decades. He orders an enormous prize turkey sent anonymously to the Cratchit house, makes a large donation to the charity collectors he had dismissed the day before, and accepts his nephew's Christmas invitation. On Boxing Day he arrives at the office before Bob Cratchit, pretends briefly to threaten him with dismissal — and then doubles his salary. Dickens closes the novella on Tiny Tim, who does not die, and on Scrooge, who becomes a second father to him and keeps Christmas well for the rest of his days.
Why It Endures
A Christmas Carol endures not as a sentimental holiday tale but as a serious moral argument. Dickens was horrified by the 1842 parliamentary report on child labor in English mines, and he originally planned a political pamphlet in response. Instead he wrote this story, believing fiction would reach hearts that statistics never would. The novella helped revive English Christmas traditions — caroling, charitable giving, family gatherings — that had faded during industrialization, and its central insight remains urgent: that generosity is not weakness, and that it is never too late to change.
Dickens explored these themes of social conscience and redemption throughout his career — in Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Hard Times. He also wrote other Christmas-themed works available on this site: the novella The Cricket on the Hearth and the short story "A Christmas Tree." More Christmas reading is available in our Christmas Stories collection.
Read the full text of A Christmas Carol free online — all five Staves, from Marley's Ghost to The End of It.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens follows Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly London moneylender who despises Christmas and treats his clerk Bob Cratchit with cruelty. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley and then by three spirits: the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Each shows Scrooge a different dimension of his life and its consequences. By Christmas morning, Scrooge is transformed into a generous, compassionate man who embraces the holiday spirit and cares for those around him, including Cratchit's ailing son Tiny Tim.
The major themes of A Christmas Carol include:
- Redemption and transformation: Scrooge's journey from miser to benefactor is the story's central argument — that people can change, and that moral growth is always possible.
- Charity and social responsibility: Dickens believed the wealthy had a moral duty to help the poor. Scrooge's indifference to the needy mirrors the attitudes Dickens criticized in Victorian industrial society.
- The danger of greed: Marley's chains and Scrooge's bleak future show the spiritual cost of a life organized around money rather than human connection.
- The Christmas spirit: Dickens portrays Christmas as a force that can soften even the hardest heart — a time of generosity, forgiveness, and family.
- Ignorance and Want: The two children hidden beneath the Ghost of Christmas Present's robe symbolize the social ills Dickens saw destroying Victorian England.
The principal characters in A Christmas Carol are:
- Ebenezer Scrooge — The protagonist: a cold, miserly old creditor whose transformation anchors the entire story.
- Jacob Marley — Scrooge's deceased business partner, whose chained ghost delivers the night's warning.
- The Ghost of Christmas Past — A small, candle-lit spirit who shows Scrooge his own history.
- The Ghost of Christmas Present — A jovial giant who reveals how others celebrate Christmas in poverty and joy.
- The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come — A silent, dark phantom who shows the grim future if Scrooge does not change.
- Bob Cratchit — Scrooge's underpaid, long-suffering clerk, devoted to his family despite his poverty.
- Tiny Tim — Cratchit's youngest son, ill and disabled, whose potential death is the emotional heart of the story.
- Fred — Scrooge's cheerful nephew, who extends Christmas warmth to his uncle despite repeated rejection.
Dickens called the novella a "Carol" and its sections "Staves" (a musical term for the lines of a staff of sheet music) to reinforce the story's identity as a festive song rather than a conventional novel. Just as a carol is sung in celebration, the novella was conceived as a literary performance — Dickens himself gave public readings of A Christmas Carol over a hundred times during his lifetime and considered it his greatest platform piece. There are five Staves: Marley's Ghost, The First of the Three Spirits, The Second of the Three Spirits, The Last of the Spirits, and The End of It.
Tiny Tim functions as the moral center of A Christmas Carol. As the youngest and most vulnerable member of the Cratchit household, he embodies everything Scrooge has refused to value: human warmth, gratitude, and faith in the face of suffering. His famous line — "God bless us, every one!" — extends Christmas blessing to all people, including Scrooge. When the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals that Tiny Tim is likely to die (because Bob Cratchit cannot afford better care on Scrooge's miserable wages), the indictment of Scrooge's greed becomes personal and undeniable. At the story's end, Dickens tells us that Scrooge became "a second father" to Tim, and that Tim did not die — the clearest sign of Scrooge's genuine redemption.
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in response to the parliamentary Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission (1842), which documented horrific conditions in British coal mines and factories, including the exploitation of children as young as five. He originally planned a polemical pamphlet titled An Appeal to the People of England on Behalf of the Poor Man's Child, but concluded that fiction would be more effective than statistics. The novella targets the self-satisfied Victorian middle and upper classes — represented by Scrooge — who accepted poverty as the natural order and resisted charitable spending. The two children Ignorance and Want, concealed beneath the Spirit of Christmas Present's robe, are Dickens's most direct social message: that neglecting the poor breeds social catastrophe.
A Christmas Carol is in the public domain and freely available. You can read the complete text of A Christmas Carol free on this site, including all five Staves. The novella runs approximately 28,000 words and takes most readers two to three hours to read in full.
Scrooge wakes on Christmas morning filled with joy and relief. He immediately sets about reversing the damage of his miserly life: he sends an enormous prize turkey anonymously to the Cratchit family, makes a generous donation to the charity collectors he had dismissed the previous day, and spends Christmas afternoon at his nephew Fred's party — welcomed warmly. On Boxing Day (December 26), he arrives at his counting house before Bob Cratchit, pretends to be angry at his tardiness, and then reveals he is raising Cratchit's salary and will support his family. Dickens closes A Christmas Carol by telling us that Tiny Tim did not die, that Scrooge became like a second father to him, and that Scrooge "knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge."
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