Es s ay s o N A Ch r is t mAs CA r o l
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to keep any negative thoughts to themselves because he felt
the tale would become a widespread public icon; a negative
review could do nothing to hurt the success of Dickens’s stories
in Thackeray’s mind: “No skeptic, no Fraser’s Magazine,—no,
not even the godlike and ancient Quarterly itself (venerable,
Saturnian, big-wigged dynasty!) could review it down” (qtd. in
Dickens 231). Similarly, Thomas Hood praises Dickens in the
January 1844 edition of his Hood’s Magazine: “It was a blessed
inspiration that put such a book into the head of Charles
Dickens; a happy inspiration of the heart that warms every page”
(qtd. in Dickens 224). In the Morning Chronicle (19 December
1843), Charles Mackey commends Dickens’s use of language
and his ability to bring readers through Scrooge’s transition
within the story: “All this is given with Mr. Dickens’s peculiar
vigour of detail and colouring; until, at last, the affrighted man,
upon contemplating his own dark, solitary, unwept gravestone,
starts in his sleep and awakes ‘a wiser and a better man.’ The
transition in the stave first is perfectly charming” (qtd. in
Dickens 230). Overall, reviewers were pleased with the writing
and the characters presented in the tale, and more important
to Dickens perhaps, they encouraged their readers to buy a
copy of Dickens’s Christmas story, if for no other reason than
for the pure delight of reading it.
But critics also felt that the story contained more than vivid
language and likeable characters; the story possessed the power
to change hearts. Mackey, in fact, opens his Morning Chronicle
review with his expectations of the effect that A Christmas Carol
might have. “Mr. Dickens has here produced a most appropriate
Christmas offering, and one which, if properly made use of,
may yet, we hope, lead to some more valuable result in the
approaching season of merry-making than mere amusement”
(qtd. in Dickens 230). Mackey goes on to discuss the importance
of the message contained in Dickens’s story, one centered
around charity and humility: “A spirit to which selfishness in
enjoyment is an inconceivable idea-a spirit that knows where
happiness can exist, and ought to exist, and will not be happy
itself till it has done something towards promoting its growth
here” (qtd. in Dickens 230). By the end of the first paragraph,
Mackey calls out his readers, asking them to practice Dickens’s
message in their lives, and to embrace the “Christmas Spirit.”