Michael Taube:
It’s long been a Christmas tradition in many households, including mine, to read Charles Dickens’ brilliant novella, A Christmas Carol. Interestingly, I read two Christmas stories by Dickens during the festive season. No, it’s not one of his well-known holiday stories like The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. I’m referring to his superb book intended to be read at Christmas that almost didn’t see the light of day.
We’ll get to that shortly.
Let’s start with A Christmas Carol, which was published in 1843. It’s the classic tale about the elderly and miserly businessman Ebenezer Scrooge. Dickens described his main protagonist as a “tight-fisted hand at the grindstone” and a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” The greedy money-lender was “hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” In spite of being a man of great wealth and privilege, Scrooge showed no compassion toward the less fortunate – and, above all, detested Christmas. The phrase “Bah! Humbug!” was his credo in life.
Scrooge, as we know, received several visits on Christmas Eve. The first was the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, followed by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. He re-lived the painful memories he’d caused to his ex-fiancee, Belle. He witnessed the sad, undetermined fate of the sickly Tiny Tim. He fearfully gazed upon his own dark, neglected gravestone.
These traumatic episodes were more than Scrooge could bear. He promised to forever change his ways if given an opportunity, and did just that on Christmas morning. It forever became a holiday with special meaning for Scrooge. “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
A Christmas Carol is one of the finest Christmas stories ever written. I’ve read my Everyman’s Library Children’s Classics version on multiple occasions. I also recently purchased a children’s version for my son published by Cider Mill Press in 2023. It includes a modern, simplified version of this story, short summary of the characters, and a few Christmas carols. Highly recommended for curious young minds!
Which brings us to Dickens’s Christmas story that’s far less familiar to most audiences, The Life of Our Lord. It was written between 1846 and 1849, around the time he was working on another masterpiece, David Copperfield. Alas, this fascinating book wasn’t published until 1934 – more than 64 years after Dickens’ death.
The story behind the story of The Life of Our Lord is, well, an interesting story in itself.
This non-fiction title focuses on Jesus of Nazareth. According to the publisher’s note of the 1999 Simon and Schuster version, the book specifically taught “the life and history of Jesus Christ, championing the virtues of mercy and forgiveness.” It was written exclusively for Dickens’ children to be, in his words, a “children’s New Testament.” He read this story to them every Christmas.
Incredibly, the book was never intended for public consumption. Dickens refused to publish it during his lifetime. When he passed down his private papers to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, he requested that she “never even hand the manuscript, or a copy of it, to anyone to take out of the house.” Gerald Charles Dickens, the author’s great-great-grandson, described the book as a “wonderful gift” to his family. In turn, they felt that “they must honour their father’s wishes. The clan closed ranks and protected their secret with great zeal.”
How did The Life of Our Lord finally get published?
The answer lies with Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, the author’s last living son who inherited these private papers when Hogarth died in 1917. Henry’s wife, Marie, “carefully hid it under her mattress,” according to Gerald, and his father told him that “marks from her bedsprings are clearly visible!” Henry, a lawyer, was seemingly torn between honouring his father’s wishes and the obvious pleasure this book could give to others. His will left the final decision up to the family. If a “majority” opted against publishing it, he directed his wife to “deposit” the manuscript with the British Museum’s trustees. If they wanted to publish it, his wife would “sell the same in trust” and divide the proceeds equally.
That’s why we’re able to read a story that one of the world’s greatest storytellers never wanted to be read by anyone other than his family.
Let’s be glad they saw things differently. While Dickens tended to be dismissive of organized religion and the Church of England, we learn in The Life of Our Lord that he had a deep, personal, and profound faith. His account of Jesus and the Gospel of St. Luke is very different from anything he ever published in his lifetime. In many ways, it’s one of the finest books he ever wrote.
“My Dear Children, I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ,” his book begins. “For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was.” That’s powerful. In another chapter, there’s an equally powerful description of what Jesus meant to Dickens. “For God had given Jesus Christ the power to do such wonders; and He did them, that people might know He was not a common man, and might believe what He taught them, and also believe that God had sent Him. And many people, hearing this, and hearing that He cured the sick, did begin to believe in Him; and great crowds followed Him in the streets and on the roads, wherever He went.”
Dickens also had a strong attachment to Jesus’s love and compassion for people from all walks of life. He saw the importance of the Twelve Apostles coming from impoverished settings. “When people speak ill of the poor and miserable,” he wrote, “think how Jesus Christ went among them, and taught them, and thought them worthy of His care. And always pity them yourselves, and think as well of them as you can.”
The great novelist’s magnificent analysis in the final chapter perfectly encapsulates how his Christian faith guided him. “Remember! – It is Christianity TO DO GOOD, always – even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts.”
Two unique sides of Dickens’s complex personality mesh together rather brilliantly in these books. The fictional revelation of Scrooge’s compassion and love for humanity in A Christmas Carol comes face-to-face with Jesus’s real compassion and love for humanity in The Life of Our Lord. It’s a Christmas miracle (of sorts) during the holidays, and a reading tradition I hope you’ll begin with your own family.
Merry Christmas!
Michael Taube, a columnist for the National Post, Troy Media, and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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