A Christmas Carol

wegs said:
He has a bit of a difficult backstory too. I imagine that the 1800’s wasn’t for the faint of heart. (Or before it)
Click to expand...
I've heard there was no YouTube.

One thing I like about Dickens, beyond the great writing style, is the historical context. It's "history" to us but to him it was just the present so his descriptions have that much more interest to me. It's one thing for a present day writer to tell a story based in the 1800's with the gas street lamps, horses, etc. but when Dickens is writing that isn't for "effect", it's just reality.
 
Seattle said:
I've heard there was no YouTube.

One thing I like about Dickens, beyond the great writing style, is the historical context. It's "history" to us but to him it was just the present so his descriptions have that much more interest to me. It's one thing for a present day writer to tell a story based in the 1800's with the gas street lamps, horses, etc. but when Dickens is writing that isn't for "effect", it's just reality.
Click to expand...
Yes, exactly. That is what makes his writings so palpable.
 
christmas movie & song content has a strong negative attenuation to me this year
usually i am somewhat ambivalent to the modern stuff and extremely reverent to high quality choirs

technically no
some things are just shut down while others things utilise resources for more pressing needs.
 
wegs said:
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
This is one of my favorite stories at this time of year, so I’m pretty impressed with how Hulu portrayed it.
Click to expand...
About six years before ''A Christmas Carol'' Dickens penned:
"The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton"
Read it here:
https://familychristmasonline.com/stories_other/dickens/gabriel_grub.htm
Perhaps the forerunner to Scrooge?
It's a quick read, and it is Christmas.

My proof it's a forerunner... Gabriel Grub rhymes with Humbug. QED:smile:
 
wegs said:
I realize this latest Hulu adaptation comes from BBC. It’s just perfection, in my opinion. Charles Dickens is nothing short of brilliant. His book, A Christmas Carol published in 1873, we still struggle with the same moral and mortal dilemmas, today. And the Catholic Church was just as much of a farce back then as it is today.
Click to expand...
There seems to be a bit of a non sequitur here. What does the Catholic church have to do with Dickens, or A Christmas Carol?

Victorian England was firmly Protestant - and so was Dickens.
 
wegs said:
If you have Hulu, you really should make time to see its adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

This is one of my favorite stories at this time of year, so I’m pretty impressed with how Hulu portrayed it.
Click to expand...
I'd recommend the Muppet version of A Christmas Carol, if you haven't seen it.
 
exchemist said:
There seems to be a bit of a non sequitur here. What does the Catholic church have to do with Dickens, or A Christmas Carol?

Victorian England was firmly Protestant - and so was Dickens.
Click to expand...
References to penance, purgatory and earning one’s redemption are all Catholic concoctions, not found in the Bible. Luther broke from the RCC due to disagreement on many of the Church’s “teachings” - these being some.
 
wegs said:
References to penance, purgatory and earning one’s redemption are all Catholic concoctions, not found in the Bible. Luther broke from the RCC due to disagreement on many of the Church’s “teachings” - these being some.
Click to expand...
Is Purgatory mentioned in "A Christmas Carol"? Where?

But yes you have a point that Dickens, though a Protestant, and though he disapproved of Catholicism, like most Englishmen of his time, is arguing for the importance of good works towards earning salvation. I had never really thought of this. But then, it seems clear that Dickens, as a social reformer, believed very strongly in the moral value of good social works. (For similar reasons I have always found the doctrine of sola fide rather strange, if not absurd.)

Penance however is a fairly universal idea, present among Lutherans, Methodists and Anglicans, as well as Catholics.
 
exchemist said:
Is Purgatory mentioned in "A Christmas Carol"? Where?

But yes you have a point that Dickens, though a Protestant, and though he disapproved of Catholicism, like most Englishmen of his time, is arguing for the importance of good works towards earning salvation. I had never really thought of this. But then, it seems clear that Dickens, as a social reformer, believed very strongly in the moral value of good social works. (For similar reasons I have always found the doctrine of sola fide rather strange, if not absurd.)

Penance however is a fairly universal idea, present among Lutherans, Methodists and Anglicans, as well as Catholics.
Click to expand...
Jacob Marley brings up “his penance,” and redemption being connected to good works. The Bible speaks of “faith without works is dead,” but most Protestants believe that Jesus’ death is a “free gift of grace,” and no works can “earn” a believer, heaven. So Dickens grew up during an era where the Catholic Church still dominated religious thinking of the day. Of course, the writers of this recent limited series, took some poetic license with Dickens’ storyline, in part that the writers of this film chose to portray Scrooge as having a childhood plagued by sexual abuse at the hands of (what is assumed) to be a Catholic boarding school principal.
 
wegs said:
Jacob Marley brings up “his penance,” and redemption being connected to good works. The Bible speaks of “faith without works is dead,” but most Protestants believe that Jesus’ death is a “free gift of grace,” and no works can “earn” a believer, heaven. So Dickens grew up during an era where the Catholic Church still dominated religious thinking of the day. Of course, the writers of this recent limited series, took some poetic license with Dickens’ storyline, in part that the writers of this film chose to portray Scrooge as having a childhood plagued by sexual abuse at the hands of (what is assumed) to be a Catholic boarding school principal.
Click to expand...
How was Christmas with your family, "Bleak House" or something better?
 
Seattle said:
How was Christmas with your family, "Bleak House" or something better?
Click to expand...
It was really great, thanks for asking. And they all got along and danced around the figgy pudding. Lol

Not quite, but definitely a great holiday. How was yours? :smile:
 
wegs said:
Jacob Marley brings up “his penance,” and redemption being connected to good works. The Bible speaks of “faith without works is dead,” but most Protestants believe that Jesus’ death is a “free gift of grace,” and no works can “earn” a believer, heaven. So Dickens grew up during an era where the Catholic Church still dominated religious thinking of the day. Of course, the writers of this recent limited series, took some poetic license with Dickens’ storyline, in part that the writers of this film chose to portray Scrooge as having a childhood plagued by sexual abuse at the hands of (what is assumed) to be a Catholic boarding school principal.
Click to expand...
This production is totally anachronistic if that is the case. Catholic boarding schools only returned to England slowly after Catholic Emancipation. It would have been an Anglican boarding school. Catholics have no monopoly on sexual abuse at boarding schools, you know. I and my contemporaries who attended Anglican boarding schools have plenty of stories, I assure you.

Catholic thinking assuredly did NOT dominate religious thinking in c.19th England. This is simply wrong. "Popery" had been much despised since the c.17th. Catholics were regarded as potential traitors, due to perceived loyalty to a foreign power (the pope). They were not allowed to attend university or to hold government positions for over 200 years.

And where is Purgatory mentioned? I am quite sceptical that this would have appeared in Dickens' story. I certainly don't remember any such reference.
 
exchemist - In the 1800’s, England had a hybrid religion that dominated - the Anglican Church vacillated between breaking free from Catholicism to adhering to certain tenets of it.

That said, Dickens seems to present in his writings, a loathing of the Catholic Church for its legalism and he also didn’t seem to believe in eternal damnation (hell). So, Marley wandering around in chains, haunting Scrooge, could be assumed to be a type of purgatory, which the writers of this film actually have spelled out in the dialogue.

I think Dickens believed in redemption in terms of correcting one’s past through repentance. But, in all honesty, Marley was dead and most likely in hell - with no hope of redemption (according to most Christian doctrine) The fact that he is in some kind of limbo state could indicate that Dickens rejected the idea of hell and made up his own ideas of the afterlife (despite self-identifying as a Christian, himself)

Hey, we should start a book club on here. I like this discussion. :)
 
wegs said:
exchemist - In the 1800’s, England had a hybrid religion that dominated - the Anglican Church vacillated between breaking free from Catholicism to adhering to certain tenets of it.

That said, Dickens seems to present in his writings, a loathing of the Catholic Church for its legalism and he also didn’t seem to believe in eternal damnation (hell). So, Marley wandering around in chains, haunting Scrooge, could be assumed to be a type of purgatory, which the writers of this film actually have spelled out in the dialogue.

I think Dickens believed in redemption in terms of correcting one’s past through repentance. But, in all honesty, Marley was dead and most likely in hell - with no hope of redemption (according to most Christian doctrine) The fact that he is in some kind of limbo state could indicate that Dickens rejected the idea of hell and made up his own ideas of the afterlife (despite self-identifying as a Christian, himself)

Hey, we should start a book club on here. I like this discussion. :)
Click to expand...
Aha, so the makers of the film drag Purgatory into it. Well, it's a view, but I'm not sure Dickens would like it. Purgatory was and is explicitly rejected by the Anglican church in its foundational Thirty Nine Articles: "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping, and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."

Ghosts, such as Marley's, were popularly thought to be souls of the departed who were troubled and unable to rest. This has no theology to support it, so far as I know. But Dickens, as a novelist, would have been happy to co-opt this popular idea for narrative purposes. But he would not explicitly embrace a Catholic idea like Purgatory.

Wiki has this to say on his religious views:
"Dickens disapproved of Roman Catholicism and 19th-century evangelicalism, seeing both as extremes of Christianity and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like spiritualism, all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846.[87][88] While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked how individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Catholicism predominated and referred to the Catholic Church as "that curse upon the world."[87] Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction that the Bible was the infallible world of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal Anglican Arthur Penrhyn Stanley's doctrine of "progressive revelation."[87]Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer".[89][90]

However, on the flip side of this, as Catholic emancipation progressed in the c.19th, the Tractarians and the Oxford Movement developed within the Anglican church. This was going on at the time "A Christmas Carol" was written. This movement rehabilitated quite a lot of Catholic liturgical practice and some doctrine. And it is the case that the revival of Christmas festivities in Britain owes quite a lot to this movement. Dickens clearly supported this revival. So maybe he had some High Church tendencies. He certainly ridiculed puritanism.

I found a rather good History Today article on all this, here: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/dickens-and-construction-christmas
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top