A Christmas Carol's relevance today.

• Position: Charity - Brief article

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Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol may become an even more relevant tale as people cope with what is expected to be an economically bleak holiday season, notes William J. Palmer, author of Dickens and New Historicism.

"Most people think of A Christmas Carol as a sentimental story of spiritual rebirth or a ghost story to illustrate a moral purpose of taking care of fellow human beings. When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, he really wrote it as a harsh indictment of England's Victorian society's treatment of the poor.

"Fast forward to 2008, and America is in an acute economic crisis. There are a number of similar themes, including the increasing gap between the rich and poor. People in the working class are losing their homes or struggling to heat their homes, and we're going into the holiday season with anticipated layoffs and high unemployment. For many, it looks like a pretty dreary Christmas."

In Dickens' tale, a wealthy London miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, is visited on Christmas Eve by three spirits who warn him that his lack of charity and kindness will lead to an eternity of suffering. Scrooge, an...