Part 2: Why is “A Christmas Carol” an Intentionally Christian Story?

If “A Christmas Carol” is a Christian story, then why isn’t God a character? The short answer: it would make for a very boring work of fiction. If God is a character in a story, then all you need to know about the ending is what the author believes about God. 

Atheist: God is either a product of the person’s imagination or evil

Agnostic: God may or may not exist, but is extraneous to the story because the characters are left to their own devices

Christian: God wins, the good people are saved, the bad people suffer and/or die

You can see why having God as a character in a fictional story will automatically make the plot of the story simplistic and boring. This is partly why authors use characters and images as symbols to demonstrate particular aspects of God’s actions in the world instead of having a character that *is* God.

So if this is a Christian story, then where are the Christian themes and symbols?

The title itself is the first indication that it’s a religious story. A “carol” is a religious song associated with Christmas, and Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ. Christ’s Mass, or the Mass celebrating the Nativity (birth) of Christ, is where the word “Christmas” comes from in English. Charles Dickens was personally more concerned with social issues than religion, but his stories are definitely written in a Christian context. So other than the title and the setting of Christmas Eve, how is the story about Scrooge a Christian story?

There should be at least one character that imitates some aspects of Christ, and in this story it is Tiny Tim:

• He is perfectly innocent and completely good
• Everyone who meets him instantly sees his suffering but also recognizes his goodness
• His suffering isn’t caused by anything that he did
• He was born to suffer and die through no fault of his own

Everyone who reads the story, or watches any of the many versions of the story, falls in love with that character and grieves his loss when he dies. When Scrooge sees his grave, he is completely distraught and can’t bear the thought that through his actions he had a hand in the suffering and death of this innocent, loving boy. When he is alive at the end, it symbolizes the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s because of his suffering and death that Scrooge repents, and it’s through his encounter with Tiny Tim that Scrooge is saved. 

As a reader, we experience the same suffering at Tiny Tim’s death and should share the desire to do whatever we can to prevent it. When we read the story, we want Scrooge to repent and change his ways. If the character were named "Jesus" instead of "Tiny Tim" then we wouldn't have the same experience. We would bring our ideas about God to the story and impose them upon the character and never really involve ourselves in the story. We wouldn't go through the process of being confronted with the results of our actions and given a chance to change them by first experiencing a change in our minds and hearts the way Scrooge does. When we go through this experience within the story of suffering and repenting that Scrooge does, it is so that we will do the same in our own lives so that we can receive salvation.