{"id":1565,"date":"2020-12-20T22:05:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T03:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2020-12-20T22:05:07","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T03:05:07","slug":"a-christmas-carol-bah-humbug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/a-christmas-carol-bah-humbug\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Carol\u2026 Bah Humbug!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, December is here at The Storage Inn in Egg Harbor Township New Jersey, and the temperatures are dropping. Just yesterday I saw one of our tenants at his 10×12 storage unit<\/a> gathering his Christmas decorations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201d Hey Bob – Happy Holidays!\u201d, I yelled. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBah Humbug!\u201d Bob yelled back with half a laugh. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bob spends the winter in Florida and is not a fan of cold weather. His response, though, made me think of Charles Dickens, \u201cA Christmas Carol”. I wondered\u00a0 what \u201cbah humbug\u201d meant, So I did a little research, and…\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Charles Dickens loved to celebrate Christmas.\u00a0 His favorite time during the holidays was Twelfth Night, the feast of the Epiphany. <\/span><\/p>\n

Early in 1843, as a response to a government report on the abuse of child laborers in mines and factories, Dickens vowed he would strike a \u201csledge-hammer blow . . . on behalf of the Poor Man\u2019s Child.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>That sledge-hammer was the book, A Christmas Carol. Below are a few interesting tid-bits about this great work of fiction.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Initially, six thousand copies of the book were printed.\u00a0 More copies were ordered after the first printing was sold in only five days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Technically speaking,\u00a0 A Christmas Carol was published by Chapman & Hall.\u00a0 However, in an interesting turn of events, Dickens paid the publishing costs himself.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Dickens would fund the publication of A Christmas Carol and would receive the profits. Chapman & Hall would be paid for the printing costs and receive a fixed commission on the number of copies sold.<\/span><\/p>\n

It only took Dickens about six weeks to write A Christmas Carol.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

As Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol he said that the Cratchits were \u201cever tugging at his coat sleeve, as if impatient for him to get back to his desk and continue the story of their lives\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marry for Love – Not Money<\/b><\/h3>\n

\u201cIf you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Belle, Scrooge’s long-lost girlfriend, says the above to Scrooge in Dream Two of A Christmas Carol.\u00a0 A dowry is a gift given by the bride\u2019s parents to the newly married couple. To marry a dowerless girl means that no money, property or goods would be given by the bride\u2019s parents to the groom or couple.\u00a0 It means that the groom would be marrying for love – not money.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marley is very Dead!<\/b><\/h3>\n

\u201cOld Marley was as dead as a door-nail.\u201d This line appears toward the beginning of the novel. Dickens included this because of a dream. He had dreamt that one of his good friends was pronounced to be \u201cas dead Sir . . . as a door-nail\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christmas…Bah Humbug!<\/b><\/h3>\n

The words are well-known as the catchphrase of miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in Dickens’ 1843 novel, “A Christmas Carol.” \"\"Scrooge, who thinks Christmas is an enormous deception, retorts, “Bah! Humbug!” to anyone who dares to wish him a merry Christmas. There are many possibilities on where the phrase came from, but each points back to a meaning of deception. Which makes sense in the way that Scrooge used it in A Christmas Carol, as he thought that Christmas itself was a hoax or deception. In fact, this is not the only literary use of the phrase, as the venerable Wizard of Oz declares himself to be \u201cjust a humbug.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cratchit family is based on Dickens\u2019s Childhood<\/b><\/h3>\n

Dickens lived in poor circumstances in a \u201ctwo up two down\u201d four-roomed house which he shared with his parents and five siblings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Like Peter Cratchit, young Charles, the eldest boy, was often sent to pawn the family\u2019s goods when money was tight. Also, like many poor families, the Cratchit\u2019s had nothing in which to roast meat. They relied on the ovens of their local baker which were available on Sundays and Christmas when the bakery was closed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dickens Revives the Christmas Spirit<\/b><\/h3>\n

At the time Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, Christmas wasn\u2019t commonly celebrated as a festive holiday. In The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol, Dickens\u2019s descriptions of feasting, games and family unity combined with his message that Christmas was a time \u201cwhen want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices\u201d helped to revive popular interest in many Christmas traditions that are still practiced today.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, there you have it –\u00a0 a little Charles Dickens \/ A Christmas Carol knowledge, courtesy of The Storage Inn<\/a>. We wish all of our Customers and Friends a Happy Holiday Season, filled with Good Cheer, Eggnog, and Christmas Cookies!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, December is here at The Storage Inn in Egg Harbor Township New Jersey, and the temperatures are dropping. Just yesterday I saw one of our tenants at his 10×12 storage unit gathering his Christmas decorations. \u201d Hey Bob – Happy Holidays!\u201d, I yelled. \u201cBah Humbug!\u201d Bob yelled back with half a laugh. Bob spends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday-storage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1577,"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-storage-inn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}