The Second Best Known Christmas Story Quiz

Answer: 1843

'A Christmas Carol' was Dickens' response to a government report on the dreadful conditions experienced by child labourers in mines and factories. After reading the report, published in the autumn of 1843, Dickens set aside 'Martin Chuzzlewit', which was the current novel-in-progress, to deliver what he referred to as "a hammer blow on behalf of the poor man's child".

Dickens began the book in October, 1843 and it took him about six weeks to write it. It was published in time for Christmas that year.

Answer: True

The initial printing of six thousand copies sold out in five days! Since it was first published in 1843, 'A Christmas Carol' has never been out of print and has consistently been a best seller.

Answer: William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray, who was a close friend of Dickens, made the comment in response to an article by a literary critic who commented that 'A Christmas Carol' was a national institution. Jane Austen was in no position to comment on the book, having been, like Marley, "as dead as a door-nail" for 26 years. I am unaware of any comments made about 'A Christmas Carol' by either Robert Browning or George Eliot, but I'm reasonably sure they both read it.

Answer: He closed his factory on Christmas Day

Mr. Fairbanks, a Chicago man who manufactured scales, was so moved by Dickens' book (or perhaps by Dickens' reading of it) that he voluntarily closed his factory on Christmas Day and gave his employees the day off with pay. Moreover, he gave each employee a turkey!

Mrs. D. did not accompany Charles on the 1867 tour. By this time, the Dickens' marriage was in disarray and had Catherine accompanied Charles on the 1867 tour he would probably have helped her to pack her bags for an elopement with Mr. Fairbanks!

Answer: No

Charles Dickens single-handedly, it would seem, helped to revive traditional Christmas celebrations that had fallen away by the early 1840s. At that time, business as usual, even on Christmas Day, was the order of the day, and while families would gather for a special dinner together on Christmas Day, the season was not the jolly time depicted in 'A Christmas Carol' (and also in 'The Pickwick Papers'). Dickens, who loved to celebrate Christmas (he was especially fond of Twelfth Night) would be pleased to know that he had a hand in making it such a joyful time of year for people around the world.

He wrote of his book, "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it."

Answer: Ignorance and Want

Dickens, who had suffered great privation in his childhood, had an abiding interest in the welfare of the children of the poor, and used his writing talent to bring attention to the dreadful conditions in which they lived and worked. He supported financially the Ragged Schools movement, along with Lord Shaftsbury and other Victorian philanthropists.

The Ragged Schools were so-called because the children who attended them were wretchedly clothed, coming as they did from the slums. The schools were held in the evenings, because the children worked during the day. Dickens fervently believed that education was the key to increasing one's opportunities in life.

Answer: Jacob Marley

Jacob Marley had been Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner. At the opening of the book we learn that Marley had been dead for seven years, and he appears to Scrooge wearing a chain made of money boxes. Marley's ghost warns Scrooge that unless he changes his ways he, too, will wear such a chain, only it will be longer and heavier since Scrooge has been creating it for seven years longer than Marley had to forge his own chain. Unless Scrooge heeds the three ghostly visitors for whom Marley is the herald, he will be forced, like Marley, to wander the earth in death, consumed by guilt and remorse for his greed and inhumanity.

Answer: False

There have been scores of film versions of 'A Christmas Carol'.

Some have been traditional, like the 1938 Hollywood version with Reginald Owen as Scrooge, the 1951 version starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge and the 1984 version with George C. Scott taking on the miser role.

Others, like 1988's 'Scrooged' starring Bill Murray, have been based on the book, and there have been multiple cartoon versions (the Disney version featuring Mickey Mouse and Scrooge McDuck is a hoot!) 2009 saw the most sophisticated animated version to date, directed by Robert Zemeckis with Jim Carrey voicing Scrooge. There have also been made-for-television productions, and there's even a musical called 'Scrooge' (thanks to star_gazer for reminding me about it) and 'A Christmas Carol' ballet! In addition, readings of 'A Christmas Carol' are given world-wide to mark the holiday season.

For my money, the Alastair Sim film version is the best of the lot. See if you can lay your hands on the original black-and-white version rather than the colourized version, to get the full effect. It's also the version that is truest to the book's text.

Answer: Fan and Belle

Fan was Scrooge's sister who died after giving birth to Scrooge's nephew Fred, and Belle was the woman to whom Scrooge was engaged when he was a young man. Belle broke the engagement when she realized that she and Scrooge no longer shared the same values.

Dora is David Copperfield's wife and Betsy is his indomitable aunt.

Estella and Miss Haversham appear in 'Great Expectations', while Lucy and Therese are, respectively, the heroine and the villainess in 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

Answer: The Cratchits

Like the Cratchits, the family in which Dickens grew up constantly teetered on the edge of poverty. Dickens' father was a free-spending optimist (much like Wilkins Micawber who doesn't appear in 'A Christmas Carol' but features largely in 'David Copperfield', the most biographical of Dickens' novels). Charles was well-acquainted with pawn shops, just like Peter Cratchit who was frequently dispatched to hock the Cratchit family's few valuables when money was short. When Charles was 12, his father John was clapped up in the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison and the family had to rely on the meagre six shillings a week that young Charles earned applying labels to jars of bootblacking. Like the Cratchits, Charles, his father and mother and five siblings lived in a cramped house (two rooms up, two rooms down) in a seedier part of London.

Young Ebenezer Scrooge was apprenticed to Mr. Fezziwigg, but I doubt if any of young Charles Dickens' early employers were as warm-hearted as either Mr. or Mrs. Fezziwigg.