Charles Dickens' Other Christmas Books

 We all remember A Christmas Carol, on account of how much it owns.  But what about Dickens' OTHER four (!) Christmas books.  Very very VERY few people read them these days.  But, I mean, it's Dickens.  There's got to be SOMETHING there, no?  Let's find out.

The Chimes (1844)

Toby "Trotty" Vetch is a poor ticket porter, and he has a hard life in a lot of ways, especially what with rich fucks giving complacent, hypocritical lectures about how the poor should conduct themselves.  But!  He does have a daughter, Meg, whom he loves.  Solid daughter. A+.  And she's going to get married to a solid dude named Richard, also, so that's nice.  But Trotty remains gloomy.  He listens to the titular chimes as he goes hither and yon, and he feels gloomy because it seems like everything's just getting worse and there's no use even hoping for anything better.  Then, of an evening, he climbs up to listen to the chimes close up, and he encounters some chime spirits cavorting about.  Only they're not too happy with him: hey, you were listening to our sound and thinking that everything's going to get worse.  That's not cool.  You have to have hope in human progress.  Here, imagine YOU were fucking dead, see you'd like THAT.  

So then he's subjected to a vision about a future where he'd died some years ago, and everything's worse for everyone he loves, Richard doesn't marry Meg because he'd gotten his mind warped by the aforementioned rich fucks, she has a harder and harder time finding work; she does end up marrying Richard when they're both kind of desperate, and they have a child, but then he dies.  She reaches the end of her rope and is going to kill herself and her daughter, but then Trotty concedes that okay, I GUESS human progress is kinda good, and then he snaps back to reality and is happy and relieved.  Obviously this all takes place around Christmas, though for something called a "Christmas Book," it is MUCH more focused on New Year's Day as a holiday.

So...yeah, you can see how this didn't resonate as much as its predecessor.  I think the biggest problem, really, is that the characters--minus the complacent rich fucks, I suppose--aren't all that memorable.  Whereas even minor characters in A Christmas Carol make a strong impression.  Still!  I kind of liked it anyway.  I won't lie.

 One thing that you weirdly don't see mentioned much, if a little googling around is any indication, is that it's pretty clearly the inspiration, or at least an inspiration, for It's a Wonderful Life.  I mean, yeah, you could argue that it's probably more inspired by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stuff in A Christmas Carol, but the circumstances of The Chimes, while not identical to the movie, are much closer to it than the earlier story.  To be fair, do I KNOW that anyone took inspiration from anyone?  I mean...no.  But it seems that way.

The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)

Look, apprently having a cricket in your house brings you good luck?  Was that a common thing in Victorian England?  I feel like I'd remember it as a highly unusual event if it happened to me.  But here we go.

This one is somewhat convoluted.  There's a married couple, John and Dot Peerybingle (solid name), with a baby; that he's substantially older than her is heavily emphasized, but in a good way.  They have a...friend, Caleb Plummer, who lives with his blind daughter Bertha.  Caleb works for an ogreish toymaker, Tackleton, who is set to likewise marry a woman, May, who's much younger than him.  But this would be a BAD marriage.  Clearly.  

Anyway, John and Dot are visiting Caleb when John thinks he sees Dot cheating on him with another man.  He's sad and all, natch, but figures, well, I probably AM too old for her, so I'll let her go, no harm no foul, which would be a surprisingly enlightened way for Dickens to take things, but if you know him at all, you know he's not going to.  Yeah, so it turns out that there was no cheating going on; the dude she was with was actually Caleb's son, who was thought to have died in South America.  This son is mentioned one (1) time at the very beginning, and it's VERY jarring to have him just suddenly appear like this.  But the good news is, he any May were in love before he left and fake-died, so now they get married and Tackleton's left out in the cold.  So then everyone's happy, and, why not, Tackleton is extremely abruptly reformed.  The end.

I guess I didn't totally hate this one, but there was a bit of a sense of what?  Why?  What's going on?  Where's all this nonsense leading?  I'll admit that the ending is quite fun, though.

The Battle of Life (1846)

Holy FUCK this one fucking sucks.  Also, you'd have to squint pretty hard to associate it with Christmas, but WHATEVER.  It's about a doctor who has two daughters, Marion and Grace.  Marion's going to marry this guy Alfred, but then she elopes with another dude, Warden, so that Alfred and Grace can fall in love.  So they do and get married and then Marion comes back and oh she didn't really elope; she was just leaving so the two of them could get together.  But then she DOES marry Warden. There's also some stuff with comic-ish relief lawyers and a servant couple getting married.  The man in the situation is name Benjamin Britain.  Is it interesting that he almost shares the name of a later composer?  No?  Okay, moving on, then.

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)

You have to admit, that title seems pretty promising.  But the big problem with this one is that it's too conceptually complicated for its own good.  The protagonist is this guy Redlaw, a chemistry professor, who's gloomy because of various things that happened in his past.  His sister died, for instance, but really, the story actually doesn't provide much detail about his woes.  Then, he meets a ghost.  It looks like a doppelganger of himself, for no apparent reason.  This ghost offers to eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind him so he forgets the things that are making him sad, which he accepts.  Also, now he has the ability to pass this forgetfulness on to other people.  Why?  I don't know; this does feel like a Japanese game like Danganronpa with completely arbitrary rules that must be followed.  But anyway, he causes some people to forget, mainly a student of his and the family he's living with.  But alas, he realizes then that forgetting their past makes people suck shit, as, eg, couples start hating each other and people aren't grateful for things because they don't remember the things they should be grateful for.  So Redlaw's sad, but fortunately this girl Milly who apparently represents some kind of preternatural goodness is able to reverse the curse.  And that's about that.  It's all very dull and not notably Christmasy.

I don't want to be too mean to any of these.  They were popular in their time, certainly, and you do have to accept that our sensibilities are just different--not necessarily better.  A Christmas Carol just resonates in a way these others don't.  Still, I don't feel the need to be too generous, either.  I don't think this is just me; compared to the one that's endured, there's a notable lack of strong atmosphere or memorable characters here.  If you want to make a case that anyone here particularly stands out--well, go ahead and do that.  Still, I don't think I'll revisit any of these.  A few years ago I read this collection of short pieces; it's inconsistent, but some of it's really good, and if you're looking for more Christmasy Dickens to read, that's where I'd go.