Louisa May Alcott’s short story “A Christmas Dream and How it Came to be True” has been referred to as “an American Christmas Carol.” This description feels not quite right for several reasons. For one, the story directly references Dickens’ ultimate Christmas story in utilizing it as the mechanism driving its plot. More important is that there is nothing peculiarly “American” about it; the events could just as easily play out in any Anglo-speaking country on the planet. Most importantly, however, is that limiting Alcott’s reimagining to being merely a nationalized version of Dickens’s plot unduly places it among the endless parodies and homages to A Christmas Carol and strips it of its truly distinctive element: a twist ending that takes the story where Dickens failed to lead.
“A Christmas Dream and How it Came to Be True” is really two stories in one with only the first half playing out as a reinterpretation of the redemptive ghost story by Dickens that provides its foundation. Alcott reinvents old miser Scrooge as spoiled little rich girl Effie who is overheard by her mother wishing there would be another Christmas. After telling her daughter that she sounds as bad as Scrooge for saying such a thing, Effie learns the story of Scrooge and the spirits who visit him in the night. A bedtime story from her nurse further engages Effie’s subconscious with the result that she has a dream in which she is visited by a spirit of Christmas who exposes her to the world of people for whom Christmas is the one time of the year they get a taste of the happiness little Effie experiences throughout the year. And just like Scrooge, she learns her lesson and promises “I will never say there isn’t any Santa Claus again” as well as being filled with the spirit of generosity and the desire to change her ways. If this were merely an “American Christmas Carol” this is where the story would end, just like with Scrooge promising to keep the spirit of Christmas in his heart every day of the year.
Instead, the story is but halfway done. Effie wakes from her dream which was extremely animated: her mother explains how she had watched her smiling and laughing and clapping her hands as if having the most delightful time of her life. Effie is just like Scrooge. She had taken the lesson of how her own privilege has resulted in her not having to be exposed to harsher side of life and the darkness that is a pervasive aspect of so many innocent children like herself. While Dickens does tell us that Scrooge went on to be as good as his word when it came to changing his ways, it at this juncture of the story that Alcott essentially gives readers a version of A Christmas Carol which is never told or, if it is, is told so rarely that it is difficult to easily come up with any other example.
What makes Alcott’s tale worthy of being something more than just “an American Christmas Carol” is that she does something unique in the boatload of fiction inspired by Scrooge. Whether it is the various iterations of the actual Scrooge or the Grinch or any various other versions inspired by the original, what is for practical purposes never shown is actual redemptive consequences of the change of heart engendered in the person who dares to speak ill of Christmas. Alcott probably doesn’t actually stand alone in making this aspect of the story as important as the events leading to the redemptive twist, but clearly she is the founder of what remains a very exclusive club.
