Socio-cultural aspects

(Better late than never...)
I think whenever reading a book like "A Christmas Carol," it is important to keep a historical perspective while reading it, because it absolutely gives the reader a base of understanding of Dicken's (or the author's) socio-cultural surroundings, that would most definitely affect his/her writing.

Keep in mind while Dickens wrote this during the "Industrial Age," and industrialization had profoundly altered the physical, social, and cultural landscapes of Great Britain. The emergence of the factory system had drawn rural laborers to the great urban centers in numbers unparalleled in history, creating dangerous conditions of overcrowding and feeding incipient "modern" problems of social dislocation, crime, and poverty. Social critics spoke of the dangers of "surplus population," and debated the relative merits of proposed solutions.

Undoubtedly, Dickens' novels are early witnesses to these disturbing urban phenomenas. In works such as David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, and Oliver Twist, Dickens casts a jaundiced eye on the social and physical conditions of Victorian London. Invariably, seedy pockets of urban decay and poverty are juxtaposed in meaningful contrast with scenes of fantastic wealth and opulence. Beggars, thieves, and miscreants-like Twist's Fagin or Great Expectations' Magwitch-haunt the alleys of forgotten neighborhoods, and pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness are ubiquitous reminders of London's seamy underside. The rich and the poor kept their distance, and often looked upon the other with mutual suspicion and loathing.

:) A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite works!