Challenging Mr Dickens.

My first experience of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol came when I was nine or ten. A teacher read the first chapter to the class shortly before the Christmas break. I loved it and wanted more, but it was to be a few years before I read the whole story for myself. I was disappointed.

The first chapter is dark, frosty and chilling in every aspect, and there’s a real ghost in it. The three spirits which follow are not ghosts, of course, but merely allegorical plot devices placed there to make the ‘spirit’ of Christmas become incarnate. I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy, and even appreciate, the lessons of Past, Present, and Future, but they had nothing of the compelling sharpness so evident in Stave the First.

And now, with a lifetime of personal learning behind me, I find the message trite (although nine years of Tory administration has at least given it more relevance.) And there’s far too much Christian proselytising for my taste.

Now I find I want some humour in the plot to break up the often mawkish and sometimes patronising syrup. It needs to be dark humour with lots of irony and sarcasm, and would probably have it if a different writer were to originate the story today. I like dark humour, you see; there are very few subjects in which I find humour inappropriate. I remember when Lucy made that infamous joke about teaching me the corpse pose. My appreciation was evident, and she said ‘I know you like dark humour.’

And so I do. Without it, the misery so evident and constant in so many walks of life would be unrelenting.