The Right to be Merry

I have endeavoured, in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it!

Their faithful friend and Servant,

C.D.

December 1843.

To the Victorians, the forces of cruelty felt as insurmountable as they do today—living within and alongside institutions that sustained the few and blamed the many who depended on them. London’s workhouses and debtors’ prisons were not aberrations; they were policy made visible. A thirty-one-year-old Charles Dickens knew that argument rarely moves people, but recognition does.

In 1843, Dickens needed both money after the flop of “Martin Chuzzlewit” and an outlet for his outrage at a parliamentary report on child labour in England. It revealed children barely out of infancy working in mines, seven-year-olds already veterans underground, eight-year-olds smoking to endure the conditions, and boys sent below “as soon as they can stand on their legs.” Dickens’ own childhood in a shoe-blacking factory after his father’s imprisonment gave the issue first-hand weight. He considered a protest pamphlet, “An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child,” but knew it wouldn’t deliver the “sledgehammer blow” he wanted. He resolved instead to create something with “twenty thousand times the force.”

And he did. “A Christmas Carol” has been adapted more than 150 times: silent films shot in borrowed warehouses, animated experiments, art-house interpretations, Cold War morality plays, prestigious BBC miniseries, and versions meant for schoolrooms and afternoon specials.

In the late 20th century, another creator driven by social responsibility—and a matching sense of humor—emerged: Jim Henson. Long before the Muppets entered Dickens’ world, he built a universe shaped by empathy, equity, and the belief that kindness could change culture. His characters challenged prejudice, taught children to question injustice on Sesame Street, and proved that humor and moral seriousness could coexist. After his passing, the company carried that mission forward. “The Muppet Christmas Carol” (1992) became the meeting point of two storytellers a century and a half apart. Dickens delivering his “sledgehammer blow” to Victorian cruelty, and Henson’s legacy guiding the Muppets to continue that message with warmth, wit, and the conviction that compassion can still change us.

In 1992, “The Muppet Christmas Carol”—my favorite film—was released. I’d argue that we are, to some degree, shaped by the movies within our reach during early childhood. I shudder to think who I’d be had my young eyes not met the felt faces of the glorious Muppets every holiday season. It was the first Muppet feature made after Jim Henson’s passing, and the company approached it as both an adaptation and an elegy. Brian Henson’s direction carries the unmistakable softness of someone preserving a legacy in real time. For fans, the shooting star has become one of the most meaningful visual signatures in the Muppet tradition. It was first used in “The Muppet Movie” to honor Jim Henson, appears again here above Kermit, and continues to surface in later productions.

A living archive of Henson-era puppetry, the effects are Muppet worthy. The Ghost of Christmas Past was filmed underwater to achieve her floating, haloed shimmer, an effect rarely attempted before or since. My thought is because the screen can only hold one being so utterly terrifying. The Ghost of Christmas Present is built on the tradition of British pantomime giants.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, towering and silent, uses in-camera scale tricks that predate digital compositing. Paul Williams returned to the Muppet world after composing “The Rainbow Connection,” and “The Muppet Christmas Carol” became one of the first mainstream modern family musicals to borrow structure from Victorian song forms. Gonzo, cast as Charles Dickens, marks the first time the author steps inside his own narrative. Jerry Juhl wanted Dickens’ prose to survive intact. And so it does, spoken aloud with such earnestness that generations of children know Dickens by way of Gonzo the Great.

In 2015, Brian Henson told The Guardian that when he approached Michael Caine for the role, the actor responded: “I’m going to play this movie like I’m working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety. I am going to play Scrooge as if it is an utterly dramatic role and there are no puppets around me.”

Scrooge is defined by his lack of connection and feeling, but for the story to work, we must still connect to his plight, even as we condemn his cruelty.

“The Muppet Christmas Carol” stands in a lineage of adaptations, but it also stands apart, a film that believes, more than any other version, that empathy is an art form. Reaching children who cannot yet read Dickens, viewers uninterested in the black-and-white masterpieces of yesteryear, and in the tradition of the best stories ever told, those who take in entertainment but depart with something far greater.

Every year we return—page, screen, stage, streaming— to “A Christmas Carol.” A story that reminds us the future can still be edited. Within our small worlds, our choices become the sparks of better mornings, or those lengthening the darkest nights of our neighbors.

Across every one of the more than one hundred and fifty adaptations, the ghosts offer up the same reminder:

Do not look away.

We can still make the Muppets proud.