At a glance: this is a 7-week study and discussion guide for A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, with 53 questions organized by reading assignment. Week 1 is free to read, with no card required.
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in just six weeks, publishing it in December 1843, and it has never gone out of print. The book's thesis is deceptively simple: a human soul is never too hardened to be reclaimed. Ebenezer Scrooge — a man so cold that even the blind men's dogs tugged their owners into doorways to avoid him — is transformed in a single night by the gift of seeing his own life clearly: its past tenderness, its present cruelty, and its probable future emptiness. Dickens wanted to "raise the Ghost of an Idea" that would haunt his readers pleasantly — the idea that generosity, warmth, and attention to the suffering of others are not sentimental luxuries but the very substance of a well-lived life.
This study guide moves chapter by chapter through the story's five "Staves" (Dickens deliberately titled them like a piece of music), with a week for the Preface and each Stave, and a final week for review. Each week invites you to read the assigned section, sit quietly with the questions — perhaps journaling your answers before discussing them with others — and then bring your reflections into conversation. The questions are designed to follow the arc of each Stave: earlier questions check comprehension and notice specific details from the text, middle questions push toward personal application, and closing questions invite broader reflection on what the story is ultimately arguing.
By the end of this guide, you should find that A Christmas Carol has done more than entertain you. You will have been asked to look at the chain you yourself have been forging, link by link; to consider what your past has made of you and what your present choices are making; and to imagine what kind of person you still have time to become. As Fred, Scrooge's nephew, says of Christmas — and the story's spirit applies to this very reading — it is "a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time." May this guide serve that same end.