When the story is just getting started very little reference is made to the outside world other than its god-forsaken climate. This is mainly emphasised by the fact that Scrooge is too stingy to put any more coal on his minuscule and feeble excuse of a fire barely ticking over on its pathetic embers, and that by putting anymore than is necessary to keep it going on he will be wasting money which is what scrooge would avoid even if the results were dire.
When reference is finally made to the outside world, Dickens mentions the smog very obviously in the background and spares no detail. As fires were used for everything in their time, unlike nowadays where you’ll rarely see a chimney smoking, then you’d seldom see a chimney not emitting smoke by ton. For example
‘There was nothing very cheerful about the climate of the town…’
But the poor people, and all the others who upheld the Christmas Spirit;
‘…and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and the brightest summer sun might have endeared to diffuse in vain.’
Dickens does try to make this obvious in his book, and does so very well.
The Cratchits are the poor family in the story and the represent the Christmas spirit. They illustrate the way that poor people, who aren’t wealthy in material things can be wealthy in love and Christmas Spirit. And even in their shed of a house where warmth is something they could only pray for. Much like the children who were cleaning the pavements and playing on the rooftops of Victorian London, Enjoying their lives even though they are poor. When Dickens describes the Cratchits house I imagine a small wooden house on an empty pier, with a little smoke coming from the chimney, and cold misty waters around them. Not a nice embodiment of house is it? Yet they still have a merry Christmas, more so than scrooge in his luxurious house with all his money.
A Christmas Carol a great example of the way that material things don’t affect Christmas Spirit, for example, where you live or how much money you have.
