'A Christmas Carol' And Whose Money Was It?

Said Bob, “I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!”

“The Founder of the Feast indeed!” cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”

A Christmas Carol (1843),
by Charles Dickens.​

The First Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the 1760's, led to sweeping social change in the UK, the US and other places. This was mainly due to the changes in the social order of things and the rise of the modern working class. People began to question their views of many things. And Charles Dickens' book "A Christmas Carol" came out around this time.

In "A Christmas Carol", Dickens rethinks people's views of greed, the poor, public institutions, the handicapped. Even Christmas itself. Before the book, Christmas was a 12 day long feast, which had degenerated into a riot by the time of Henry VIII. In the book, he showed that Christmas could be a quiet reflective time, to be with your family and enjoy their presence.

In the above quote, Dickens in referring to a common argument at the time. That it was all right for employers to pay their workers low, unfair wages, because it was their money. As Mrs. Cratchit alludes to, Bob Cratchit worked long hours for that money. In a moral sense, it was really his at that point. Though Scrooge still technically was the one who owned that money.

 

"A Christmas Carol" was interesting in its moral outlook, and moral claim. Because it rejected modern morals. Which at the time was Capitalist, or now, "traditional" morals. It said greed, usury, envy and pride were wrong. Things the new capitalists were claiming. And the older values of love and generosity, were the best.

Now the moral lesson of "A Christmas Carol" seems new and foreign to us, for some reason. Some compare the book to the Communist Manifesto.