Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a classic Yuletide story, one that continues to influence our notion of the holiday 160 years after it was written. Iain Crawford, vice president for academic affairs and professor of English at The College of Wooster, is an expert on Dickens, and he provides some interesting insights into the author and his classic Christmas story.

Q. What was the inspiration for A Christmas Carol?

A. The answer may surprise you. Budget cuts, or as Dickens would say later in his career, "hard times" led to this magnificent story. Even though Dickens had enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame since bursting on to the literary landscape with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, his popularity had not yet been matched by financial success. In 1843, his sixth novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, was not charming readers as his previous novels had done. As a result, his income was far below his great expectations and needs. It was at that point he decided to write a Christmas story. Six weeks later, A Christmas Carol was finished - handsomely produced with gold lettering and a number of hand-colored illustrations.

Q. What was the initial public response to A Christmas Carol?

A. Reaction to A Christmas Carol was universally glowing. It appeared on Dec. 19, 1843, in an edition of 6,000 copies, and it sold out immediately. William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair, and both a friend and rival to Dickens said, "Who can listen to objections regarding a book such as this? It seems to me a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness." Just like Scrooge himself, many contemporary readers felt the impact of the story and took it immediately to heart. Thomas Carlyle, the grim and dour intellectual leader of early Victorian England, was just one example. A legendarily frosty host, Carlyle was so moved by A Christmas Carol, that he arranged a series of dinner parties and ordered a requisite number of turkeys so that he might emulate Scroogian generosity.

Q. In what ways do Dickens' talents as a writer emerge through A Christmas Carol?

A. Readers are continually amazed at the exuberant vitality with which Dickens tells his story. What we find is an extraordinary verbal energy creating and drawing us into a world of imaginative wonder and delight. As Lord Jeffrey, the notoriously stringent editor of the Edinburgh Review, put it, Dickens has "done more good, and not only fostered more kindly feelings, but prompted more positive acts of beneficence by this little publication."

Q. How has A Christmas Carol shaped Dickens' legacy?

A. As one Victorian writer put it, audiences "looked up to Dickens as the spirit of Christmas incarnate: as being Father Christmas himself." When Dickens died in 1870, that same writer tells of overhearing the reaction of a young woman selling fruit from a barrow on the London streets. "What, Dickens, dead?" she was heard to say. "Then will Father Christmas die, too?"

Q. Why has A Christmas Carol become such a timeless story?

A. Because of its faith in fundamental human goodness and its emphasis on social purpose blended with family love, A Christmas Carol has become, as described by Professor Philip Collins, "a spiritual tonic." Remarkably, it is a tonic that seems to have always been part of our lives, something we have always known and don't quite know when we first knew it. We remember it as a cluster of phrases, images, and ideas - "Bah, Humbug," "Scrooge," and "Tiny Tim," for example - and we believe in it, just as we believe in Christmas and all it means for us. It serves as a reminder to keep those memories warm, do the good work Dickens' Christmas inspires in us, and, along with Tiny Tim, say, to ourselves and those we love, "Merry Christmas, and God bless us every one!"