Christmas Spirit In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Throughout the phantasmagorical novella Dickens portrays Christmas as a time of unanimous magnanimity saturated by light and warmth antithetical to the biting, ubiquitous weather. It is a message to the government and Prime Minister Peel about the ever expanding divide between mammon and poverty. 

Ostensibly, in the extract Dickens uses natural images, human warmth and powerful symbolism to convey Christmas as a time for all to be cordial and jovial, not matter where or how it may be celebrated. The antithetical contrast between land and sea gives impressions of the warmth that is surrounded around Christmas, although the weather is unforgiving and a glacial winter wind howling invariably. The human warmth of " ray of brightness on the awful sea... they wished each other a Merry Christmas" glows to the fact that even though the munificent sailors do not possess many desirable belongings, they do not care in this moment as it is Christmas time, a time for joy and laughter, and a time to be with good friends and family. Furthermore, the unanimous time of joy is shared by the sailors far off the coast who remember the time as easily as their names and as long as they have each other, they are having a merry Christmas. Dickens uses the overwhelming collective spirit of Christmas to connote to the Prime Minister that money is the least of concerns around Christmas as family and friends are far more important to the working class who spend countless, repetitive hours working for their families and may not have much to their name, but are undoubtably content with warmth as it is a time to be together. The most notable example of this is Bob Cratchit. He has so little as a single, dying lump of coal to keep himself warm, yet will always have a heart warmer than Scrooge's as he cherishes the little he has and values everything around him. His poor and sickly son, Tiny Tim, with not long left to live is allegorically a Christ like figure, always looking for caring for the wellbeing of others above himself.  

Throughout the rest of the novella Christmas spirit is demonstrated by the many characters introduced. In Stave 1 Fred is the embodiment of Christmas spirit with all his positive virtues that are associated with Christmas. This is shown through Fred entering Scrooge's counting house " all in a glow: his face was ruddy and handsome: his eyes sparkled and his breath smoked again". Fred is irradiated with warmth and purity as it irradiates off him like radiation. Moreover, the juxtaposition between Fred and Scrooge distinctly infers an inverse relationship between wealth and happiness as although Fred claims that " it has never put a scrap of gold of silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done my good and will do me good", he still stays true to the joy and all- encompassing purity in likeness of Christmas. Once again Fred represents the working class in an attempt by Dickens to the mammonites in parliament that ignore the cries of those in factories that  are benevolent to one another and not corrupt with mammon and greed. Finally, the antithetical contrast between Fred and Scrooge in the way they are described foreshadows Scrooge's metamorphosis from the parsimonious miser to the affable and philanthropic  gentleman at the end of the novella by the change is description of him, as at the beginning he is described as " hard and sharp as flint ", contrasting to the lively language of " regarded everyone with a delighted smile".