A STAKE OF HOLLY THROUGH HIS HEART

Good morning! This post will include more from A Christmas Carol. In his introduction of the tale, Mitch Glazer writes:

In 1842 [Dickens] vowed to write “a very cheap pamphlet” called an “Appeal To The People Of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.” For greater impact Dickens decided to wait until Christmas to release his essay. This pamphlet became A Christmas Carol.
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

I love this bit of dialogue. Scrooge’s nephew is the only human in the story who stands up to him.

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“If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

Same conversation. A bit harsh, don’t you think?

* * *
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.

The church bell is wonderfully personified here.

* * *
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol.

You needn’t ask how Scrooge responded to the caroler. Saint Dunstan is the 10th-century patron saint of goldsmiths. He once pulled the Devil’s nose with red-hot tongs from his blacksmith forge.

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He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.

This is another great example of personification.
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I’ll be back with more on Tuesday and continue daily through Christmas Day. Stay tuned!