Located in Shrewsbury England you can find the grave of Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s not a real grave but a prop that was used in the 1984 version of “A Christmas Carol”. After the movie finished filming. The set designer forgot to remove the gravestone and it became a popular tourist attraction.
Located in Shrewsbury England you can find the grave of Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s not a real grave but a prop that was used in the 1984 version of “A Christmas Carol”. After the movie finished filming. The set designer forgot to remove the gravestone and it became a popular tourist attraction.
Did you ever wonder why Charles Dicken’s chose the name “Ebenezer Scrooge’ for the name of his curmudgeonly miser protagonist of “The Christmas Carol”? It certainly wasn’t by accident. Dicken’s was always very careful in the naming of his characters. He wanted the name to evoke a defining attribute about who they were in essence.
The name “Ebenezer” can actually be found in the Bible ( I Samuel 7:2-4) the Ebenezer was a stone used to commemorate divine intervention in a battle with the Philistines. Dicken’s described Scrooge as “hard and sharp as flint” The stone was to remind the Israelites of divine intervention which changed the outcome of the battle. Scrooge also was the recipient of ‘divine’ intervention and he to awoke with a total different trajectory as the night before.
The name “scrooge’ is a play on an older English word “scrouge’ meaning to squeeze or crowd and the word ‘gouge’ which means to hoodwink or swindle. Like many talented writers, Dickens would often create new jumbled words (called a portmanteau) where he would take two existing words and jam them together to create a brand new word.
So based on the definitions, Ebenezer Scrooge was a stony, cold man with a heart crowded by the cares of the day only focusing on himself and his needs. This also seems to gel with Dicken’s description of Scrooge in “The Christmas Carol. ‘The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled (sic) his cheeks, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue.’ Stony cold and embittered his physical mien matched his interior, ‘external heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he’.
While many believe that Dicken’s choice for the name was deliberate, there is one other theory that is more serendipitous. The name was an actual person buried in Edinburgh, Scotland. The story goes like this: In 1841 Charles Dicken’s was giving a lecture in the Scottish capital. He arrived early and decided to take a stroll around the city. With time to kill, he wandered through the Canongate Churchyard (or Kirk yard as it is called in Scotland) It is reputed that he recorded in his diary the name upon a headstone that caught his eye “Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie” with the epitaph “a meal man” Meaning he was a grain merchant. Dicken had misread the line to say “a mean man” and began to himself as to why someone would write such a heartless thing one someone’s tombstone. It is said that this was the impetus to creating his most famous novella.
I did some research and there is an “Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie” buried at the Canogate Kirkyard in Edinburgh, but i couldn’t find a picture of it to post. If you can find one post it in the comments. of the two theories I like the first one better. It would be a shame if Ebenezer Scroggie was a decent, honorable man and became maligned in literary perpetuity as a stoney cold man with a crowded heart. But at least Scrooge was blessed with an opportunity for redemption which isn’t to bad a trade off.
Love this 🙂
Thank you!!