One such occasion was immediately before the Christmas holiday, when I observed a Year 7 English lesson on Dicken’s festive classic – A Christmas Carol.  The novella that is arguably Dicken’s most famous work. The class were being prepared to write their own version of the tale, an endeavour in which they are in plentiful company.

According to Internet Movie Database (IMDB) there are over 100 adaptations of A Christmas Carol including versions staring Bill Murray (Scrooged), Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell (Spirited) and even a version co-starring Michael Caine and The Muppets.

Time magazine identifies episodes of more than 20 TV shows inspired by the novella, as well as four opera and two ballet versions. Indeed, centuries later it is almost inconceivable that someone could be unfamiliar with the plot and theme of Dicken’s morality tale, but like the majority, I had never actually read it.

 A couple of years ago, the Bursar, Mrs Espley, gifted a copy to the heads of all five Foundation Schools, inside was an accompanying note.

‘Wishing you a very happy Christmas. From the Foundation Bursar (who hopefully is no Scrooge).’

She is not – she carries her burden as the schools’ financial conscience with generosity and is the most pupil-centred bursar I have encountered!

Inspired by the lesson, I remembered this gift, embarrassingly still located in the ‘to read’ section of my bookshelf and resolved to read it over Christmas. 

Over the break, as they often do at that time of year, my thoughts occasionally turned to a theme for my New Year blog.  Surely no one would be interested in my latest ‘wildly aspirational’ resolutions! Then, whilst reading A Christmas Carol, it struck me.  The spirits cause Scrooge to reflect on his past, where it has taken him (his present), where it might take him (his future) and how he might change to be a better version of himself and create a better future for himself than the one he sees stretching before him if he continues in his current habits and behaviours.  Although set on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, A Christmas Carol is a ‘New Year tale’. Scrooge undergoes a process of review and self-reflection and attempts to reset, a process that in making our new year’s resolutions large numbers of us undertake annually at the turn of the year.

But this process of renewal is not something limited to individuals.  Societies frequently do the same and often at New Year. Something evidenced by history and highlighted by my other, far less seasonal, Christmas reading by historian David Olusoga.

In the United States of America, on New Year’s Eve 1862, people gathered to spend the final hours of the year together.  Nothing unusual in that, but these gatherings, known as Watch Night meetings, were far from normal and many of them were held in secret.  They were commemorated in the painting Waiting for the Hour by the artist William Tolman Carlton. A painting that was later presented to President Abraham Lincoln.

The work shows a group of enslaved black men, women and children inside a wooden cabin, gathered around a pulpit made from US Sanitary Commission crates. An older man stands with a book, and a large pocket watch with an anchor, a symbol of hope, at the end of its chain. To his right, holding a black baby, is a white woman.  The woman may be intended to resemble Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe, the American author and abolitionist who wrote the popular and influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin that depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. Some of those depicted are kneeling in prayer. One man stands in the doorway holding the United States flag in his arms.  Another man, wearing a slave collar, is holding a flaming torch above his head. The torch is illuminating a clock ticking its way toward midnight held by a man in the centre of the painting, it also casts light on a proclamation pasted to the wall that reads “Proclamation/ 1^st January/ For ever free/ Slave”.

All those pictured by Carlton are waiting in expectation for the Emancipation Proclamation, due to be issued at midnight on 1^st January 1863, desperately hoping that Lincoln carries through with the preliminary proclamation published earlier that year.

The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95 was issued as the United States approached its third year of a bloody civil war. The proclamation declared

“that all persons held as slaves…are and henceforth shall be free.”

Despite this expansive wording, its immediate impact was limited. Although it freed most of America’s enslaved people, it did not free them all. The civil war was not yet over, many areas were still under Confederate control and the fight was to rage on for two further years until General Lee surrendered following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war and an end to slavery.  Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not bring about an immediate end to slavery, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the war into a war for freedom.  Hence, New Year’s Eve 1862 was to become known as Freedom’s Eve.

It is now nearly two hundred years since Freedom’s Eve. A few years earlier, the first edition of A Christmas Carol sold out by Christmas Eve following its original publication on the 19^th of December 1843.  Since then, it has never been out of print. While the original story is firmly rooted in the mid-19^th century, its fame and relevance remain a product of the story’s faith in humanity and the limitless possibility of redemption. 

A faith justified by history, Freedom’s Eve and the Emancipation Proclamation. It is fitting that both Dicken’s melodramatic morality tale and this seminal event in American history be set against the Christmas and New Year period.  January takes its name from Janus, the Roman god of new beginnings.  He is usually depicted as having two faces so that he can see both into the past and the future.  Thus, January is an appropriate time for us like Scrooge to look back at our past, think about our futures, and, where necessary, make changes to our habits.  History and literature both tell us that human beings have an almost unending capacity for renewal and improvement.