Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	Today we are treated to the mangling by Jack Chick of what is probably the most beloved Christmas story of all time, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This tract was written well before Chick apparently decided that he shared the opinion of Christmas espoused by the Puritans, that it was way too Pagan for his tastes. And since this is a Chick tract, we can expect it to have way more Jesus in it than the original. This is a low bar to clear, since the original has exactly zero mentions. And Chick would most definitely not approve of the faith of Dickens. While Dickens considered himself a Christian, he was a Nonconformist, who was a Unitarian for much of his life. Definitely someone who Chick would rail against, so no wonder A Christmas Carol had to be made over in Jack Chick’s image.
Mingnon	And what worse way to miss the point than to take a classic tale of a rich man learning that his actions have and will matter, and turning it into yet another come-to-Jesus story?
Dot	The story of Dickens's Christmas Carol is one which people interpret in multiple ways. To some, it's a tale about how you’d better participate in our modern festive rituals lest you too be dunked on as a Scrooge. To others (me) it's a cautionary tale about how billionaires should act as responsible members of society if they actually want people to remember them as good people when they are finally delayed, denied and deposed gone, a bar which to this day they fail consistently to clear. There is one reading which seems to have taken hold amongst a certain conservative demographic though. A narrative pushed repeatedly by Fox News viewers who think The Other is coming to take away their way of life, and a narrative which resonates in certain very interesting and ironic ways with a certain Mr. J. T. Chick. For you see, this is the story of a man who wouldn't say Merry Christmas any more, and much like how Scrooge was visited by three ghosts, the time has come for Chick to be visited by three dissectors.

Cover / Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	Humbug? Humbug!
Dot	Clearly Chick needed to figure out whether or not the contents of the tract were humbug or not and eventually he decided that they were. I could have told you that after one flip through it shouldn't take two decades to figure this out. Oh and for those of you taking part at home, by default you'll be seeing the Tract of Christmas Past. To see what's changed between revisions (and oh boy is there a doozy of a revision throughout the tract) just hover your cursor over the page to switch to the Tract of Christmas Present.
Boudreaux	I intend to read Humbug! as a judgment on the tract itself.

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	That is a giant hooked nose Scrooge has, which is at odds with most drawings of him. One might almost be tempted to think he was supposed to be Jewish.
Mingnon	As a rule of anti-semitic thumb, every character obsessed with money needs to be depicted with that nose. The rest of that mugshot doesn’t do much to flatter Scrooge, either.
Dot	On the one hand, it's Chick, and for a tract which he did himself, the detail on this face is pretty damn impressive, and not the calibre we often see from him. On the other hand, it's Chick, a man for whom it's a pretty fair rule of thumb to go “if it looks like an antisemitic stereotype, it probably is.”

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	As in most Chick tracts, the soon to be converted unbeliever knows nothing about Jesus and Christianity.
Dot	“You know, the manger?” seems like a bit of a random first point of reference for the story of the birth of Jesus, but okay.
Mingnon	There are more awkward moments in the story to try and point out. “You know, the angel telling Mary she’s pregnant?”

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	What is going on with Scrooge’s upper lip here?
Dot	There's a “you wanna know how I got these scars?” story there for sure.
Mingnon	The only time you want to mention ‘Eternal Destiny’ is when an epic fantasy RPG storyline the likes of Final Fantasy is going to unfold. I don’t want those words wasted on THIS!

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	The Trinity, and along with it Jesus as eternal and creator, did not become dogma until around the time of the Council of Nicea in the 4th century. Here is one of Dan McClellan’s many videos on the topic. And certainly the efforts of people like Jack Chick and his followers to demonize others, and many other similarly hateful people, makes it a bit tough to counter what Scrooge is saying here.
Mingnon	Don’t forget recent events that have happened as of writing this dissection… 😔 Though if you are in a bad place mentally, then don't click the links and take care of yourself. They are meant for reference, not doom-scrolling.

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	And humans act exactly as God (presumably) made them. Falldidit is not an escape hatch for responsibility here.
Mingnon	Well, when you hammer in the idea that humans are sinners and prone to evil over and over, people will sooner or later start acting that way.
Dot	So Scrooge is a horrid and bad guy for having a low opinion of humanity, but God is perfect and righteous for having the same goddamn take? Make it make sense, Jack.

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	It is impossible to make out what Cratchit is handing Scrooge here. While it could be a Bible, since this is the Chick universe, I am going to have to go with a 19th century religious tract.
Dot	Oh, you mean the kind of the “boring, no pictures” variety which for the sake of his own marketing he prefers to suggest does not actually works on people?
Mingnon	Cratchit comes off as disturbingly smug despite being depicted as a good man. Certainly comes close to Caught’s “Too bad, I’m saved!” in terms of failing to read the ‘savee’.

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	What is that hideous thing the butcher is handing Cratchit? I know that it is supposed to be a tiny goose, but looks instead like some sort of marine invertebrate. Also note that the original version is less preachy. The original is preferable to the new, as it demonstrates optimism rather than faith in a God who does not have a good record of answering prayers. And it is more convivial as well. But can’t have Christians saying Merry Christmas to each other…
Mingnon	Because Christmas is pagan! You thought that Christmas was one of the few truly Christian holidays, but no, far from it.
Dot	True, but obviously what happened here is that someone told Jack what “make out” actually means and he rewrote this bit in a panic.
Mingnon	Guess nobody should have corrected Chick on anything, lest he shove in more Jesus talk.

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	The little girl looks strangely like the doll in the window.

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	This may be the only instance where the Christians in a Chick tract go “Haw Haw Haw”. And being a child of the 60s, I can’t see the mention of Tiny Tim without thinking of this.

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	Why the change from “hate” to “despise” in the new version?
Mingnon	Because “hate” is too strong a word. Though it’s still clear she really, really, really doesn’t like Scrooge.
Boudreaux	I suppose I should praise Bob Cratchit actually demonstrating that he follows the words of Jesus. But frankly I am more sympathetic with his wife. It is very rare for people like Scrooge to ever change, and praising evil acts just sticks in my craw.

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	Scrooge wasn’t exactly eager to meet Marley in the original story. In fact the text says “Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon.”
Dot	Such is the corner that Chick has written himself into. Literally the very first sentence of Dickens's story is “Marley was dead, to begin with.” He spends a long time setting up the reality of his deadness so that the audience will buy into his supernatural appearance later on. Meanwhile, Jack Chick is all like “Fuck me, I'm twelve pages in and I forgot to establish JACOB MARLEY?!” And then he goes ahead and writes another two pages of filler material because Jack Chick doesn't know how to write A Christmas Carol.
Mingnon	It’s writing enough to make anyone wish for The Night the Reindeer Died to become a reality for Christmas.

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	For all that woman knows, Scrooge could be a professing Christian, in which case his actions could have no possible impact on his standing with God. After all, by faith alone, right?
Dot	I question Chick's judgement adding this particular bit of padding, which has no equivalent scene in the original story. We're halfway through and we're yet to encounter a single ghost. When are we going to get to the fireworks factory?
Mingnon	Oh no, the slightest mention of God now, and Scrooge suddenly gets a pang of Christian-all-along guilt? Better get a workhouse or asylum lined up to make up for that! Yeesh, even if we got to the fireworks factory, this moment would have spoiled it.

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	This scene is in the novel, and in pretty much every film adaptation of it, going back to the silent era. Chick is likely cribbing from the most famous version, Scrooge. I am going to have to go with the Muppet version as my favorite. Of course in every instance, the face is that of Marley. And since Chick sees Satan pretty much everywhere, he had to change the face to his, even though it makes no narrative sense.
Dot	Why would Satan even want to turn up here. He's not proposing any dodgy contracts or trying to turn Scrooge gay, so hinting that he, the Christian devil, is a real guy while Scrooge is having a moment approaching spiritual vulnerability feels like an error of judgement. I guess if Jesus can turn up in a slice of burnt toast, the devil gets to have some fun too.
Mingnon	Surprisingly, this is actually pretty close to what the Devil might have been depicted as in the 1800s. Otherwise I would just think he was seeing the face of someone like Nikola Tesla. But now that I think of it, a version where Scrooge comes out of the closet would be a hundred times better than this tract.

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	Tiny Tim shows more consideration for others here than just about any fundamentalist Christian you would run across would, in real life.
Mingnon	Because Tiny Tim prayed for Scrooge, God had decided to release the spirit of Marley for only a few minutes out of the… let’s say 1200-year-long wait for God’s inevitable judgement and tossing into the lake of fire. What a wonderful miracle!

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	That’s it, that’s all the revelation Scrooge gets in this tract. No three ghosts, no time-traveling voyages to learn a valuable lesson. If this wasn’t restricted to such a tiny book, I would have been on board for a Christmas Carol rendition of Dante’s Inferno.
Boudreaux_	The whole point of the original story is that one makes many choices throughout their lives, for good or ill. And those choices have consequences, as in this case, that one could die lonely, alone, and poorly regarded by everyone. And yes, Chick has to distill this all down to the Heaven or Hell dichotomy, losing pretty much the whole point Dickens was trying to make (that and his hatred of Laissez faire Capitalism and how it afflicted the poor). And how could Scrooge end up worse off than Marley? Even if Chick followed Dante (and he didn't), pretty sure they would both end up in the same circle of Hell.
Dot	I remember reading this online and thinking some pages just hadn't loaded in. A lot of adaptations can be accused of failing to capture the spirit of the original tale. This fails to capture THREE spirits of the tale. In fact, fuck it. Let's do Jack Chick's job for him and incorporate the three ghosts that everyone expects to see in an A Christmas Carol adaptation into his A Christmas Carol adaptation, while playing to his sick rendition of Christianity. 1. The Ghost of Christmas Past reviews Scrooge's life. Insert some Victorianized vignettes of Scrooge doing sin like the highlight reel of This Was Your Life or something. Maybe have his relationship with Belle fall apart because he “hath committed adultery in his heart” or whatever. 2. The Ghost of Christmas Present reflects Scrooge's present state of sin. We'll skip over Ignorance and Want because let's face it, Chick did not “beware this boy”. 3. The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows him the Great White Throne Judgement. In an ironic reversal of the original story, it opens the Book of Life and points to the ABSENCE of a name between Zebedee Scriver and Aaron Scrubb, then Scrooge falls into hell because really, are you gonna let Disney outdo you on the hell thing, Jack? THEN he wakes up and repents. Now granted I don't know how you'd fit this into 24 pages, but this is an absolutely bloated mess of a tract so there's plenty to cut.

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	Here we see the tract Cratchit gave Scrooge. Too bad this is in the past, or else Chick could have made it a Chick tract, as he so loves to do.
Dot	I'm honestly amazed he had the restraint. At least he didn't go as far as having Scrooge declare “Boring! No pictures”

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	And here is an incredible rarity in Chick-dom. Usually the sinner gets saved, and that is the end of it. But here Scrooge is told to actually make restitution, and he does so.
Dot	I guess if he's going to hit the story beats of the original, he HAS to have something resembling Scrooge's actual redemption arc. I'm not sure what Chick would have done if he'd been forced to fall back on his own creativity.
Mingnon	“Lord, you’ve set me free!* (*Plus shipping and handling)” I’m sure Chick would have either A) skipped Scrooge’s shopping spree entirely and just had the old Godly back-patting scene, thus killing even more of the original story’s charm. Or he could have B) gone down a path that would make Scrooged’s Ghost of Christmas Future sequence look like something completely played for comedy.

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	As is typical in Chick tracts, note that Scrooge is a lot less nasty looking post conversion. Apparently stating the sinner's prayer gets you plastic surgery and a makeover.
Dot	Most of us need several years of HRT and maybe FFS for THAT kind of glow up. And that's where I'm going to stop because I don't really want to do an “estrogen could have saved her” reading of Scrooge all that much.

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

Dot	This comes down to conservation of space I assume, but I've just realized from Scrooge delivering the goose himself that we've skipped over the “You there, boy, what day is it?” scene that NOBODY skips over because it's an iconic part of the story. Chick just doesn't understand what people like about this story, I guess.

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	People have long speculated about what disease Tiny Tim may have had. There weren’t many conditions like his that could have been improved by the medicine of the day. But as the linked article speculates, rickets and tuberculosis could have been improved by better living conditions, which Scrooge could certainly accomplish. And perhaps Scrooge saving Tiny Tim is the whole point of his redemption story, one life saved being of more consequence than any amount of piety
Dot	It's as true now as it was back then that “it takes a kindly millionaire to come along and pay for your child's healthcare” isn't so much heartwarming as it is indicative of a DEEP fucking rot in society. And Tiny Tim, who did not die, survived long enough to reach the arbitrary age of accountability, putting him at risk of sin and hell because that's just the kind of mysterious way the god of Chick's tracts works in.

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

Dot	Now, by this point, if you've been following both versions of the tract, you might have noticed that Chick has taken a somewhat unusual stance between editions, having REMOVED almost all explicit references to Christmas in his retelling of A Christmas Carol to the point of outright refusing to say Merry Christmas. So what happened to make him join the “War On Christmas” on the side AGAINST Christmas? Well, it turns out, as is the case with several of Chick's quirks, Alberto happened. In one of the Alberto comics, he goes off on one about Christmas imagery being appropriated from pre-existing traditions. Normally when people bring this up they're talking about early Christians appropriating existing festivals to make them about Jesus and thereby get people on board with Christianity without disrupting too many traditions, but Alberto and Chick ultimately took the opposite meaning, that the Catholic Church, because it's EEEEEVUL, absorbed pagan traditions into itself in order to trick Good Innocent Christians into doing paganism and damning themselves. Of course, Chick will still promote the Christmas stock at Christmas. Gotta make money save souls somehow.
Boudreaux_	With Chick’s attitude here, he is making himself into more of a Scrooge than Ebenezer ever was. All the emphasis is about going to Heaven, as that is the only point worth mentioning in a Chick tract. Nothing about how, even though he can’t change his past, that there is now more hope for happiness in the rest of his life. His reconciliation with his relatives was a big part of the original story, but that is completely missing here.
Mingnon	I guess it’s to try and demonstrate that being Christian makes you do good things, which somehow is why the part of Scrooge’s redemption is kept. But this is despite that as Boudreaux said before, faith alone is what matters. Which would mean that charity - despite being a good thing that Christians are just assumed to do - would be completely pointless.

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Dot	God what a dogshit tract. Chick plugs this as “adapted from the classic story of Ebenezer Scrooge” and tries to play it off like he understood the assignment in ANY way, and completely botches every possible aspect of it. He cuts out the meat of the story to keep the pace up, and it STILL feels bloated. I like to do my best to appreciate the more artistically competent and even striking of Chick's bullshit, but there’s none of that here and there just comes a point where no, he's just really fucking bad at his job. Still, as the far right media went absolutely rabid at the so called War on Christmas it's incredibly funny to see Chick take the completely opposite track, becoming so entrenched in his own fundie world that he just straight up stops believing in Christmas. So I guess I'll just pick up the slack as I sign off. A very merry Christmas to those of you out there who keep it, and as this absolute fucking hell year rounds out to a close, find something to take solace in. Be something that others can take solace in if you can. Fuck knows we're gonna need a hell of a lot of it for the next while. Also if you want a GOOD Christmas Carol as a palate cleanser, might I just go ahead and recommend the 1970s animated version by Richard Williams. Now THAT'S how you haunt a bastard.
Boudreaux_	While Scrooge becomes more generous, there is little doubt that he remains very wealthy indeed. In an alternate universe, one could imagine Chick referencing such verses as Matthew 19:16-30. And this would be in line with Dickens’ intent. But that Chick does not exist in our universe, our Chick was quite happy with people amassing huge amounts of wealth, so long as some of that wealth is used to buy his crappy tracts. Chick couldn’t eliminate all concerns for the plight of the poor in this tract, as it would have twisted the story beyond all recognition. But in the end, it is all about going to heaven, and avoiding hell. For this holiday season, celebrate by showing some kindness to a fellow being, human or not, and you will have made more positive difference in this world than all the billion tracts Chick has published, put together.
Mingnon	In all honesty, Chick would have done best to just leave this story alone and go after It’s a Wonderful Life instead. More Christian, and a lot less related to Christmas, so no real mangling of the script needed. As it is, this tract is sadly bare-bones given all the character that A Christmas Carol had. It used to be my favorite Christmas story as a kid, and for reasons that have already been made obvious. Like the fictional Scrooge, Chick was simply too stingy to grant this masterwork the kind of treatment it would have needed to be taken more seriously - maybe a comic adaptation? But Chick being Chick, Humbug is condemned to obscurity, only to be dug up and mocked like we’ve done today. Oh well. As we’ve already pointed out there are many more, and much more famous Christmas Carol adaptations to enjoy. And for other holiday traditions, I’m sure there’s media out there to celebrate those either. There’s definitely no reason to wage the War of Putting the Christ Back in Christmas when December is meant for feeling cozy! Bonding over with loved ones and enjoying a lot of food the second month in a row! So that’s where I’ll leave you. Happy Holidays, and a hopefully okay New Year!

Further Reading ⇑ ⇓

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