Think and Drink: Scrooge’s Politics of Humbug
Today, we recognize A Christmas Carol as a morality tale about greed, with Charles Dickens becoming “The Man Who Invented Christmas” by discovering the Christmas spirit. But, in its 1843 context, Dickens’s novella is a deeply political response to the horrors of the Industrial Revolution, the exploitative rise of the British Empire, and the political reaction to the New Poor Law of 1834.