It has to be the famous story ever told about Christmas … apart from the obvious other one, of course, where the Son of God born in a manger kicks the whole idea of Christmas off.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech, is a brilliantly and creatively told morality tale about how the message of the season, the true message of selfless giving and caring for others beyond yourself, should be the one by which you guide and measure your life.
Whether you are practising Christian or not, the message is a potent one, so powerful in fact that in the course of one supernaturally extended night, one Ebenezer Scrooge, a man so twisted by avarice and greed that he scarcely has any human kindness left in his withered soul, is taken on a transformative trip through the full extent of his life, even unto death, by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
It’s a well-known tale, and one which speaks to that part of us that wants to believe, especially at Christmastime, that no matter how far gone someone might seem that they can still be healed, redeemed or whatever terms catches your idealistic fancy.
Written at a time when Britain was reinventing Christmas for itself, “exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as cards and Christmas trees”, A Christmas Carol is an empowering story about the power of Christmas to change lives and to make lives demonstrably better beyond December.
Classical Comics, which counts among its adapted titles, Macbeth and Wuthering Heights, turned Dicken’s classic tale into a graphic novel back in 2008, introducing it to a whole new group of people who might otherwise have never come across the text.
With artwork that leaps powerfully off the page and which is the equal of any movie or TV adaptation in visual impact, A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel inspirationally uses the original text to convey the true power and import of Dickens words which even almost two hundred years later still resonate quite massively.
What struck this reviewer was how a story that he had come across repeatedly and which he belatedly read in its original novella form back in 2017, was how it came alive all over again in ways that floored him.
When Scrooge, for instance, is with the Ghost of Christmas Present, the revelation that he has the skeletal persons of Ignorance and Want beneath his billowing green robes absolutely takes your breath away as they emerge crawling from his protection, evidence of how much need and want there is in the world and how much Scrooge could change that if he so desired.
The scenes in the graveyard pop too, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come terrifyingly impactful in its silent accusatory and yet kindly condemnation of Scrooge.
The text is enhanced and made all the more wondrously alive by this astonishingly brilliant artistic undertaking, proof that A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel is not simply another in a long line of adaptations but one which has the power to really impact people, especially who have yet to encounter the idea of the redemptive power of the season and the how one man, so transformed, can make such a profound and lasting difference to the world around him, long after the candles have been snuffed out and the last turkey eaten by celebratory souls.
