I need to know everthing about the Christmas Carol.?

Answer 1

Dickens began writing his "little carol" in October, 1843 finishing it by the end of November in time to be published for Christmas with illustrations by John Leech. Feuding with his publishers, Dickens financed the publishing of the book himself, ordering lavish binding, gilt edging, and hand-colored illustrations and then setting the price at 5 shillings so that everyone could afford it. This combination resulted in disappointingly low profits despite high sales. In the first few days of its release the book sold six thousand copies and its popularity continued to grow. The first and best of his Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol has become a Christmas tradition and easily Dickens' best known book.
Ebenezer Scrooge is a penny-pinching miser in the first degree. He cares nothing for the people around him and mankind exists only for the money that can be made through exploitation and intimidation. He particularly detests Christmas which he views as 'a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer'. Scrooge is visited, on Christmas Eve, by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley who died seven Christmas Eves ago.

Marley, a miser from the same mold as Scrooge, is suffering the consequences in the afterlife and hopes to help Scrooge avoid his fate. He tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three spirits. These three spirits, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, succeed in showing Scrooge the error of his ways. His glorious reformation complete, Christmas morning finds Scrooge sending a Christmas turkey to his long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, and spending Christmas day in the company of his nephew, Fred, whom he had earlier spurned.

Scrooge's new-found benevolence continues as he raises Cratchit's salary and vows to assist his family, which includes Bob's crippled son, Tiny Tim. In the end Dickens reports that Scrooge became ' as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew'.

Original Illustrations

John Leech provided eight illustrations for A Christmas Carol. Four woodcuts and four hand colored etchings:





Select an image to see a larger version

Fifteen Bob a Week

The miserly Scrooge paid his clerk, Bob Cratchit, a weekly salary of fifteen shillings (cockney slang for shilling was "bob"). Bob "pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name".

According to C. Z. Barnett in his play A Christmas Carol or The Miser's Warning (1844) Cratchit would have spent a week's wages to buy the ingredients for the Christmas feast: seven shillings for the goose, five for the pudding, and three for the onions, sage and oranges.

Ignorance and Want

One major theme in A Christmas Carol was rooted in Dickens' observations of the plight of the children of London's poor. It has been said of the times that sex was the only affordable pleasure for the poor; the result was thousands of children living in unimaginable poverty, filth, and disease. In 1839 it was estimated that nearly half of all funerals in London were for children under the age of ten. Those who survived grew up without education or resource and virtually no chance to escape the cycle of poverty. Dickens felt that this cycle of poverty could only be broken through education and became interested in the Ragged Schools in London.

Ragged Schools were free schools, run through charity, in which the poorest children received religious instruction and a rudimentary education. Dickens generally applauded the work of these schools although he disapproved of introducing religious doctrine at the expense of a practical education which would help the pupil become a self-sufficient member of society. Despite the availability of these schools, most poor children remained uneducated due to the demand for child labor and the apathy of parents, wretchedly poor and uneducated themselves.

Dickens introduces these children in A Christmas Carol through the allegorical twins, Ignorance and Want. The Ghost of Christmas Present shows them, wretched and almost animal in appearance, to Scrooge with the warning: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."

Dickens continued to support education for the poor through his works but compulsory education for all did not come about until 1870, the year of Dickens' death.

The Death of Tiny Tim

Of all the affecting scenes from A Christmas Carol none touches the heart more than the death of the crippled Tiny Tim, foreshadowed to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, especially to Victorian readers. Large families and child mortality were common in the 19th century and many readers may have suffered firsthand the loss of a child.

Michael Patrick Hearn, in his book The Annotated Christmas Carol, reports that one observer of a public reading by Dickens of A Christmas Carol in Boston in 1867 noted that the passage of Tiny Tim's death "brought out so many pocket handkerchiefs that it looked as if a snow-storm had somehow gotten into the hall without tickets".

Sabbatarianism

Sabbatarianism, the Christian doctrine of strict observance of Sunday as a holy day reserved for worship, was attacked by Dickens throughout his life. In 1836 he published the pamphlet Sunday Under Three Heads in opposition to a Bill that would have extended already strict limitations to Sunday recreation. Dickens felt that these Bills were an attempt by the upper classes to control the lives of the lower classes disguised as religious piety. He argued that Sunday was the only day that the poor and working classes could enjoy simple pleasures that the upper and middle classes enjoyed all week. In A Christmas Carol Dickens again voices these concerns through this exchange between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present:

"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment."

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day," said Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."

"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

A Christmas Carol Stave 3

Cooking the Cratchit's Christmas Goose

The homes of the poor were equipped with open fireplaces for heat and cooking but not with ovens. Thus many, like the Cratchits, took their Christmas goose or turkey to the baker's shop. Bakers were forbidden to open on Sundays and holidays but would open their shops on these days to the poor and bake their dinners for a small fee. Dickens tells of Master Peter Cratchit and the two younger Cratchits going to fetch their Christmas goose from the bakers.

Answer 2

While FIGJAM has given you an extensive summary, I'd still like to suggest that you read the book yourself. Not only is it an excellent story, it also short. You can probably read it in a few hours. You can even read it online at http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/christmascarol/ - as I said, it won't take long to read. If you merely read a summary and not the book, you are truly missing out on something special. Even watching one of the movie versions will not give you the real picture.

My very short summary:
-Scrooge is a stingy miser, living alone, loving no one and nothing save money and the acquiring of it.
-On Christmas Eve, seven years to the day since his partner, Jacob Marley died, Scrooge is going to have an unusual experience.
-Firstly, he sees the ghost of his dead partner in his home who tells him he is living wrong and he'll be visited by three spirits who will show him the truth and, if Scrooge listens, he'll be changed.
-Secondly, he meets the Ghost of Christmas Past...who shows Scrooge his past; what he was and what he became.
-Thirdly, he meets the Ghost of Christmas Present...who teaches him the true meaning of Christmas.
-Fourthly, he meets the Ghost of Christmas Future...who shows him what the future holds if he doesn't change his ways.
-Fifthly, Scrooge is changed and begins to amend his ways; he sends food to Bob Cratchit (his clerk) for Christmas and goes to church and later accepts his nephew's invitation to dine. He becomes generous and happy, helps Bob Cratchit and his family (including help that saves tiny Tim's life) and raises his salary. He knows what Christmas means and always remembers his ghostly visitors and his heart is forever changed for the better.

Answer 3

She used to host that variety show in the 70's.

Answer 4

Go to wikipedia.com.

Answer 5

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (commonly known as A Christmas Carol) is what Charles Dickens described as his "little Christmas Book"[1] and was first published on December 19, 1843 with illustrations by John Leech.[2] The story was instantly successful, selling over six thousand copies in one week and, although originally written as a potboiler to enable Dickens to pay off a debt, the tale has become one of the most popular and enduring Christmas stories of all time.[3]

Contemporaries noted that the story's popularity played a critical role in redefining the importance of Christmas and the major sentiments associated with the holiday. A Christmas Carol was written during a time of decline in the old Christmas traditions.[4] "If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease," said English poet Thomas Hood.[5]
Contents

* 1 Plot summary
* 2 Themes
* 3 Characters
o 3.1 Principal
o 3.2 Supporting
* 4 Adaptations and sequels
* 5 See also
* 6 Notes
* 7 References
* 8 External links

Plot summary

A Christmas Carol is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one evening. Mr Scrooge is a financier/money-changer who has devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. He holds anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season.
Ebenezer Scrooge encounters "Ignorance" and "Want" in A Christmas Carol
Ebenezer Scrooge encounters "Ignorance" and "Want" in A Christmas Carol

In keeping with the musical analogy of the title, A Christmas Carol, Dickens divides his literary work into five "staves" instead of chapters. This is a little joke Dickens has carried out throughout the story; it adds humour to the story and links in, because a stave is something you will find in a piece of music, and a "carol" is a type of music/song.

Stave I – Marley’s Ghost

The story begins by establishing that Jacob Marley, Scrooge's business partner in the firm of Scrooge & Marley, was dead—the narrative begins seven years after his death to the very day, (Marley was as dead as a doornail), Christmas Eve. Scrooge and his clerk Bob Cratchit are at work in the counting house, with Cratchit stationed in the poorly heated "tank", a victim of his employer's stinginess. Scrooge's nephew, Fred, enters to wish his uncle a "Merry Christmas" and invite him to Christmas dinner the next day. He is dismissed by his relative with "Bah! Humbug!" among other unpleasantness, declaring Christmas time to be a fraud.

Two "portly gentlemen", collecting charitable donations for the poor, come in afterwards, but they too are rebuffed by Scrooge, who points out that the poor laws and workhouses are sufficient to care for the poor. When Scrooge is told that many would rather die than go there, he mercilessly responds, "If they would rather die ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." At the end of the workday, Scrooge grudgingly allows Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, but to arrive to work all the earlier on the day after.

Scrooge leaves the counting-house, eats dinner at his usual tavern, and returns to his home, an isolated town house formerly owned by his late business partner, Jacob Marley. In keeping with his miserly character, Scrooge lives in a small suite of largely unfurnished rooms within the house which he keeps dark and cold since "darkness is cheap" (the rest of the rooms in the building having been let out as offices).

While he unlocks his door Scrooge is startled to see the ghostly face of Marley instead of the familiar appearance of his door knocker. This is just the beginning of Scrooge's harrowing night. As Scrooge climbs the staircase of his house he thinks he sees a locomotive hearse charging up the stairs before him in the dark. As he gets to his room, puts on his dressing gown, and eats his gruel by the fireplace, he sees the carvings on his mantelpiece transform into images of Jacob Marley's face. All of the bells in the house begin to ring loudly. When they stop he then hears a clanking noise. His cellar door opens loudly and then the clanking on the stairs coming upstairs and approaches his room. Marley's ghost passes through the door and appears before Scrooge.

Marley has come to warn Scrooge that his miserliness and contempt for others will subject him to the same fate Marley himself suffers in death: condemned to walk the earth in penitence since he had not done it in life in concern for mankind. A prominent symbol of Marley's torture is a heavy chain wound around his form that has attached to it symbolic objects from Marley's life fashioned out of heavy metal: ledgers, money boxes, keys, and the like (representing his sins ). Marley explains that Scrooge's fate might be worse than his because Scrooge's chain was as long and as heavy as Marley's seven Christmases ago when Marley died, and Scrooge has been adding to his with his selfish life. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a chance to escape this fate through the visitation of three more spirits that will appear one by one. Scrooge is shaken but not entirely convinced that the foregoing was no hallucination, and goes to bed thinking that a good night's sleep will make him feel better.

Stave II - The First of the Three Spirits

Scrooge wakes in the night and day the bells of the neighbouring church strike twelve. He remains awake until one, when the first spirit appears and introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past. His personal appearance is very interesting; he looks like a young boy, but at the same time, he looks old. His hair is white (tied in a ponytail), but he has no wrinkles. This spirit leads Scrooge on a journey into some of the happiest and saddest moments of Scrooge's past, events that would largely shape the current Scrooge. These include the mistreatment of Scrooge by his uncaring father (who did not allow his son to return home from boarding school, not even at Christmas and was abusive according to his sister, Little Fan), the loss of a great love sacrificed for his devotion to business, and the death of his sister, the only other person who ever showed love and compassion for him who picked him up at boarding school to go home at Christmas. Unable to stand these painful memories and his growing regret of them, Scrooge covers the spirit with the cap (which was made by the sins of man and had a beam of light coming out of the top) it carries and he is returned to his room, where he falls asleep. He also noticed that the light of the cap had never extinguished and this is a symbol because it is foreshadowing that Scrooge's light in him will never be extinguished (his hope will never die).

Stave III - The Second of the Three Spirits

Scrooge wakes at the stroke of one. After more than fifteen minutes, he rises and finds the second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, in an adjoining room. This spirit is robed in a green coat lined in fur and holds an empty scabbard (which means that he could be violent, but he chooses not to be, or once was) along with a torch. The spirit shows him the meagre Christmas celebrations of the Cratchit family, the sweet nature of their lame son Tiny Tim, and a possible early death for the child; this prospect is the immediate catalyst for his change of heart. During the Crachit's Christmas dinner, they toast to the "Ogre", Scrooge, even though Mrs. Cratchit doesn't like Scrooge. Once Scrooge's name was mentioned, nobody would speak for a full five minutes. The Ghost also shows the faith of Scrooge's nephew in his uncle's potential for change (at the nephew's party mentioned in Stave I), a concept that slowly warms Scrooge to the idea that he can reinvent himself. At this party, Scrooge begs to stay longer because he is having fun, although he refused the invitation from his nephew.

To further drive the point, the Ghost reveals two pitiful children who huddle under his robes which personify the major causes of suffering in the world, "Ignorance" and "Want", with a grim warning that the former is especially harmful. At the end of the visitation, the bell strikes twelve. The Ghost of Christmas Present vanishes and the third spirit appears to Scrooge.

Stave IV - The Last of the Three Spirits

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes the form of a grim spectre, completely robed in black, who does not speak and whose body is entirely hidden except for one pointing hand. This spirit frightens Scrooge more than the others, and harrows him with visions of the Cratchit family bereft of Tiny Tim, of Scrooge's own lonely death and final torment, and the cold, avaricious reactions of the people around him after his passing (they joke about his death and funeral). Without its explicitly being said, Scrooge learns that he can avoid the future he has been shown, and alter the fate of Tiny Tim—but only if he changes.

Stave V - The End of it

In the end, Scrooge changes his life and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted soul he was in his youth before the death of his sister. He anonymously sends the Cratchits the biggest turkey the butcher has, meets the charity workers to pledge an apparently impressive amount of money to their delight, and spends Christmas Day with Fred and his wife.

The next day after Christmas, Scrooge arrives at work early. Cratchit is late and Scrooge pretends at first to be his old selfish self, but then tells Cratchit that he is going to raise his salary. Cratchit is shocked and Scrooge wishes him a Merry Christmas.

In the denouement, Scrooge proves to be better than his word and gains a fine reputation as a kind and generous man who embodies the spirit of Christmas in his life.

Themes

The story deals extensively with two of Dickens' recurrent themes, social injustice and poverty, the relationship between the two, and their causes and effects. It was written to be abrupt and forceful with its message, with a working title of "The Sledgehammer". The first edition of A Christmas Carol was illustrated by John Leech, a politically radical artist who in the cartoon "Substance and Shadow" printed earlier in 1843 had explicitly criticised artists who failed to address social issues. Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes in the "Poor Laws" (welfare system), changes which required among other things, welfare applicants to "work" on treadmills, as Ebenezer Scrooge points out. Dickens asks, in effect, for people to "lighten-up" in treatment of the poor.

Characters

Principal

* Ebenezer Scrooge
* Bob Cratchit
* Fred (Scrooge's nephew)
* Tiny Tim (son of Bob)
* Jacob Marley (who appears in the story only as a ghost)
* The Ghost of Christmas Past
* The Ghost of Christmas Present
* The Ghost of Christmas Future

Supporting

* Fezziwig (to whom Scrooge had been apprenticed as a youth)
* Fan (Scrooge's late sister)
* Belle (a young woman to whom Scrooge was once engaged)
* Mrs. Cratchit (Bob Cratchit's wife)
* Peter Cratchit (Bob's eldest son)
* Martha Cratchit (Bob's eldest daughter)
* Belinda Cratchit (Bob's second eldest daughter)
* Two, unnamed, "smaller Cratchits" a boy and a girl
* Dick Wilkins (Scrooge's co-worker under Fezziwig)
* Scrooge's unnamed charwoman, who sells some of his belongings, including his bed curtains and the shirt he was originally meant to be buried in (she took it off of his dead body!).
* Mrs. Dilber - Scrooge's laundress,(she is also his charlady) who also sells off some of the dead man's belongings.
* The unnamed undertaker's assistant, part of the trio who plunder the dead Scrooge's belongings and sell them to Old Joe.
* Old Joe (a receiver of stolen goods; in the "future" segment of the story, he is given the dead Scrooge's belongings, after his room and his body have been plundered by the charwoman, Mrs. Dilber the laundress and the undertaker's man)
* The two portly gentlemen are symbolic which Dickens compares to the young,boy & girl the rich getting richer due to the Industrial Revolution & no social reforms being introduced for the working classes
* A young boy and girl, Ignorance and Want, respectively.

Adaptations and sequels

Main article: List of A Christmas Carol adaptations

A Christmas Carol was the subject of Dickens' first ever public reading, given in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute on 27 December 1852. This was repeated three days later to an audience of 'working people', and was a great success by his own account and that of newspapers of the time. Over the years Dickens edited the piece down and adapted it for a listening, rather than reading, audience. Excerpts from 'A Christmas Carol' remained part of Dickens' public readings until his death.

A Christmas Carol has been adapted to theatre, opera, film, radio, and television countless times. According to the Internet Movie Database, various movie adaptations of the story were filmed as early as 1908, in a version produced by Thomas Edison.

Perhaps the most popular and critically acclaimed film adaptation of the story was made in Britain in 1951. Originally titled Scrooge (and renamed A Christmas Carol for its American release), it starred Alastair Sim as Scrooge, and was directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst with a screenplay by Noel Langley.

Patrick Stewart was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his 1999 portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in a made for television movie for the TNT network based on his one man stage show of A Christmas Carol. Stewart plays all the Characters in the stage show, but the movie has a full cast.

Fredric March (1955) and George C. Scott (1984) both received Emmy Award nominations for playing on television.

Most modern adaptations refer to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as the "Ghost of Christmas Future" instead.

A lighthearted version of the story was portrayed in The Muppet Christmas Carol, with Michael Caine as Scrooge and Gonzo as Charles Dickens, narrating the tale while also being a part of the background action.

A classic Walt Disney adaptation of the tale, entitled Mickey's Christmas Carol, has the character Scrooge portrayed by Scrooge McDuck, a character who would later be the basis for the Disney series, Ducktales. Supporting players included Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, Donald Duck as Fred, Goofy as Jacob Marley & Jiminey Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past, amongst the wide universe of Disney characters taking part in the story.

Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge (2002) is a satire by Christopher Durang, blending A Christmas Carol with O. Henry's Gift of the Magi and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.

A popular radio adaptation was presented in the 1930's with Lionel Barrymore playing Scrooge. Barrymore was so identified with the character that his home studio of MGM planned a film version for him to star in, but by the time cameras were ready to roll, Barrymore's arthritis had confined him to a wheelchair and the part was played by Reginald Owen. A new, original theatrical audio version faithful to Dickens and starring Peter Gerety with other Broadway performers has been released by The Night Kitchen Radio Theater through the web site SpokenWordAmerica.com.

Dickens wraps up the story with two short paragraphs telling us that sickly Tiny Tim survives and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge becomes renowned for his newfound goodness—basically a "happily ever after" ending—but he provides no detail on what happens to any of the characters. Following the every-good-story-deserves-a-sequel idea, a number of authors have crafted their own versions of what befell Scrooge and company. Ranging from Internet stories to best-selling novels (and even a television screenplay), several different works have picked up the characters and events of Dickens' classic to spin new tales for the story's aftermath.