Christmas Carol in London2 min read

Christmas Carol written by Charles Dickens is a story which isn’t just ‘well-known’ but shared among everyone in the UK.

This is a recording of my journey to explore pieces of Christmas Carol I have found in London by tracking places related to this traditional British-Christmas novel.

Recently, I am enjoying visiting bookshops to ask staff their favourite Christmas stories.

Because 14/20 of them answered ‘Christmas Carol’, I am just impressed at how much the British people are familiar with this story… Someone said ’Everyone studied this story in school’.

Another person said ‘This is something like a picture of Christmas for me…’

Old Vic Theatre has just now opened Christmas Carol.

After dropping the curtain, actors on the stage of Old Vic announced that they would collect a contribution for the Field Lane Ragged school, one of several establishments for London’s half-starved, illiterate street children.

Dickens wrote the story inspired by his visit to the school.

By 1841 almost 2 million people lived in London, but without compulsory schooling, only a fraction of this population had received any formal education.

While the empire and the domestic population grew bigger and bigger, Dickens feared ‘the capital city of the world would become a vast hopeless nursery of ignorance, misery and vice; a breeding place for the hulks and jails’.

He might have woven the story of Christmas Carol hoping the future in which everyone could’ve grown up with plentiful minds and charitable spirits through education and literature.

The Field Lane Ragged school became a pioneer of the UK’s ragged schools and is still running the fantastic activities.

You can imagine/interpret every single scene’s real picture or messages deeper by exploring places which have appeared in this book. You may get a little confused when Tim sings ♪Christmas carol to collect money in Camden Town.

Camden is now known as a subcultural area, however, it used to be one of the great piano-making areas in the 19th century Europe, including many of small and middle-sized manufactures or workshops.

This time, the Old Vic’s crossroad-shaped stage surrounded by the crowd enabled the actors to communicate to the audience. It was not the sort of play which breaks a wall between the stage and the auditorium and involves the audience to the world of the story.

However, why did I feel that I was welcomed in the circle which everyone joined and shared the story together during the show…?

Undoubtedly, it was because this story is ‘The Story for Everyone’. The season we can feel Tim’s singing, Bob Cratchit’s running and love for his children and his boss and the wind blowing with Jacob Marley’s voice finally has come.

It is my pleasure that I can spend my time in the UK, ‘the country of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol’, at Christmas.

I would like to find as many pieces, feelings and footprints of this story as I can by walking around in London.