Der Weihnachtsabend: Eine Geistergeschichte
1922
Der Weihnachtsabend: Eine Geistergeschichte
1922
Translated by Julius Seybt
The book that invented the modern Christmas. Dickens wrote this novella in 1843 to pay off a debt and ended up reshaping how the Western world celebrates the holidays. At its heart is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser so corrosive that he views charity as a disease and joy as weakness. But when the ghost of his dead partner warns him that three spirits will come calling, Scrooge is forced to confront the life he's built from cruelty and calculation. What follows is a haunting, funny, ultimately devastating journey through Christmases past, present, and yet to come. Dickens uses the supernatural to do what he did better than anyone: hold a mirror to Victorian England's grotesque inequality and ask whether a society that abandons its poor can call itself civilized. The ghosts are terrifying. The social critique cuts deep. And the ending still works its miracle 180 years later, because what Dickens understood is that nobody is beyond redemption, and everyone deserves a second chance.
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“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.””
— Charles Dickens
“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.””
— Charles Dickens
“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?""I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.””
— Charles Dickens
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.””
— Charles Dickens
“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused””
— Charles Dickens
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.””
— Charles Dickens
“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!””
— Charles Dickens
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round”
— Charles Dickens
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!””
— Charles Dickens
