Over the span of five posts, I am looking at Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a wonderful story about the dramatic process to effect one man’s complete change of heart. Dickens arranged the novella into five chapters or staves, as he labeled them. “Stave” has its roots in the word “staff,” as in a musical staff, and his carefully chosen term reminds us that Dickens really did envision this work like a musical piece, a carol that could illuminate some of the meaning attached to the season of Christmas.  Each post will look at one stave and some of the beauty and meaning wrapped up in the words.

We find Scrooge a willing student when the Ghost of Christmas Present visits him. Scrooge tells the ghost, “‘I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learned a lesson which is working now. To-night if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.’” Though Scrooge’s vocabulary still reveals a mindset fixed on loss and gain, we see that maybe his attitude is beginning to shift.

If the Ghost of Christmas Past visit elicited emotions like regret, longing, and sorrow, the second ghost’s visit elicits warmth, joy, generosity, and compassion. Instead of showing Scrooge when he missed the point about Christmas, this ghost shows Scrooge everyone who gets it. Scrooge may be lost, but this ghost shows him that there are plenty of people who have discovered the joy and meaning that comes with Christmas. We see it in the merry bustle and good cheer surrounding Christmas cooking and shopping, the satisfying contentment that comes with a good meal shared with loved ones, and the games and laughter that arise naturally from celebrations. 

And music. This stave, more than any other, shines a light on music and singing and their role in Christmas celebrations. We must remember that the whole novella was built on the idea of a musical composition, so it makes sense that music itself would figure into the structure of the story. As the ghost shows Scrooge many different kinds of Christmas celebrations, music accompanies almost all of them:

“All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round, and by and by they had a song, about a lost child traveling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.”

“The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song–it had been a very old song when he was a boy–and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.”

“They stood beside. . . the officers who had the watch, dark, ghostly figures in their several stations, but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought. . .”

“After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew what they were about. . .”

This last “musical” family is Scrooge’s own family. He is standing in his nephew’s living room, watching them celebrate Christmas together. And it is as “this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him came upon his mind; he softened more and more and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindness of life for his own happiness with his own hands. . .” Scrooge is experiencing what most of us already know about music: it has power to influence attitudes, emotions, and even actions.

Scrooge has for so long distanced himself from the “sounds” that characterize the best of what it means to be human. For decades, he has surrounded himself only with the sounds of clinking coins and verbal business deals and shuffled contracts, and because of that, “Bah! Humbug!” is the only chorus Scrooge can sing. Part of his change of heart will involve a change of music. Scrooge must learn to sing a new song, so that just like his nephew’s family, he will know what he must be about.