“Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge’s name was good upon change for anything, he chose to put his hands to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.” For some, “A Christmas Carol” has become a holiday tradition, enjoyed during the jovial winter season, but for actor Gerald Dickens, there is a deeper connection with the celebrated masterpiece. “I’m very lucky that I’m a great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens,” Gerald said during a sit-down with NBC New York on Dec. 9 before his one-man performance of the seasonal novel at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. Growing up Dickens According to Gerald, his lineage puts him “into the most amazing family you can imagine.” “Growing up, especially this time of year at Christmas, was just an adventure,” he said. “Always, you know, the house was surrounded with all the things that you hear about in “A Christmas Carol” and the celebrations and the plum puddings and the cakes and everything. And it was just fabulous family to grow up into.” Although Gerald is the first to admit he had absolutely no interest in his ancestor when younger (or as he puts it, “I never really had anything to do with Dickens. It didn’t interest me.”), he grew up knowing about his famous lineage because of his father. “My father was a huge Charles Dickens fan and bit of an expert and a scholar,” Gerald said. “So the house was always filled with Dickens stuff. So I just grew up in this, this atmosphere.” English novelist Charles Dickens While Gerald distanced himself from the famed author, he said that his father gave him the space to do so — knowing that he would eventually grow to appreciate his works. “My dad was perfect,” Gerald explained. “He just said, ‘That’s fine, choose what you want to do with your life. Do it well. Do your best. That’s all we can ask. That’s all. It doesn’t matter.'” This, of course, before slyly adding, according to Gerald: “But you know, Dickens will get you in the end.” “And he did, because back in 1993, I started performing this one-man performance of “A Christmas Carol,” and it’s just snowballed and grown from there.” Gerald Dickens, actor and great-great-grandson of English novelist Charles Dickens, performs his one-man play of “A Christmas Carol” on Dec. 9 at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. Dickens on stage For the past 32 years, Gerald has been taking his great-great-grandfather’s renowned works on the road, internationally, as one-man plays — including the beloved holiday classic. “I was always involved in theater from the age of nine,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to do with my life.” However, bringing his ancestor’s works to the public — and in turn to new generations — wasn’t Gerald’s idea, although he always loved theater. Rather, it came up as a means to help a local charity during a milestone year for “A Christmas Carol.” Gerald said that it all started in 1993, which was the 150th anniversary of the holiday novella. “Dickens published it in 1843, and there was a lot of publicity in Britain at that time about the anniversary of the book and somebody came to me — she was raising money for a local charity and had a very entrepreneurial twist to her personality — and came to me and said, ‘Look, Charles Dickens used to perform theatrical readings of “A Christmas Carol,” and it’s the anniversary, and there’s all this publicity and you’re an actor, so why can’t we recreate one of those readings?'” Charles Dickens gives his last reading in 1870. Although initially apprehensive, Gerald went ahead and accepted the challenge — even though he never did one-man theater before. “I treated it not as a member of the Dickens family doing an event, but as an actor with a script,” he said. “I thought, that’s how I’ve got to do it. I’ve just got to treat this like any other performance I do. So for the script, I use the reading version that Charles Dickens himself had edited for his tours, his performances.” Gerald’s initial apprehension was not only because he never was part of a one-man theatrical performance before, but he didn’t think that a modern audience would appreciate it. “The modern audience isn’t going to take it. They’re just going to sit there and be very bored,” he remembers thinking. “They’ll all come out of duty to the charity and they’ll say nice things, but it’s not going to work. So I need to dramatize it a bit. I need to bring it to life a bit.” The challenge was on. “So I started trying to work out voices for all of the different characters. And the first character you need to find is obviously Scrooge. He’s central to the whole story. So I went to the first description in the book. How does Dickens describe Ebenezer Scrooge?” Charles Dickens’ description of the protagonist was so specific and vividly captured in the 1843 novella, that just by reading his initial introduction, “suddenly there he was,” Gerald recalls. “You know, all I did was read the lines, and I’d become him,” Gerald said. “And the more I did it, the more I realized what an extraordinary script Dickens had written.” From an actor’s perspective, “It was just the best thing to work on,” Gerald said, adding he felt an added sense of connection because his ancestor was also a lover of theater and an actor himself. Queen consort Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall opens The Making of Dickens exhibition, an immersive exhibition about the life of Charles Dickens who was born and lived in the county, at the Guildhall Museum on February 2, 2022 in Rochester, Kent, United Kingdom. During the tour the Duchess was shown some of Charles Dickens’s personal artifacts and then joined local school children from St Margaret’s at Troy Town, Church of England Primary School, to listen to an extract being read from Great Expectations. It was read by Gerald Dickens, great-great grandson of Charles Dickens. The children also asked The Duchess questions about her love of reading. (Photo by Arthur Edwards-WPA Pool/Getty Images) An actor’s journey And just like that, the boy who rebelled against his famed great-great-grandfather’s literary legacy eventually came to embrace it — becoming a staunch figure in celebrating his characters and bringing them to life for new generations. Over the past three decades, Gerald has traveled internationally, putting on his one-man performances — a journey that has allowed him to meet folks from all walks of life. So how have his travails as an actor been? “It’s never been routine. It’s never been work,” Gerald said. “It’s always been exciting. It’s always been fun.” Good-bye to the stage…kind of When speaking with Gerald, one can easily feel the sheer excitement with which he talks about Charles Dickens’ works, admiring his ancestor’s literary endeavors. But even that isn’t enough to keep him on the road indefinitely. After more than 30 years since embodying “Scrooge” for the first time and the dozens of other Dickens’ characters on stage, something that brought his dad great pride and joy, it is time for one last bow for Gerald — at least when it comes to his audience in the United States. Wanting to spend more time with his family — including his two adopted children — this season’s tour stateside is Gerald’s last in the United States, although he still plans to put on his beloved shows in his native England. A trial edition copy of A Christmas Carol (1844) displayed in The Charles Dickens Museum which on this day, is celebrating both its centenary and the 155th anniversary of the great Victorian author’s death, on 9th June 2025, in London, England. The Dickens Museum is the only surviving home of Charles Dickens, a repository of 100,00 personal items and research materials relating to the life of this renowned author of famous works such as A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. It was at this address that he wrote The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. The house in Doughty Street was his home between 1837-39 and remains governed by a charitable trust. Charles Dickens: Standing the test of time For a novella first published in 1843, “A Christmas Carol” has stood the test of time — as many of Charles Dickens’ other literary masterpieces have. But why? Gerald has some thoughts. “Two reasons: especially for “A Christmas Carol,” he said. “It’s a darn good story. It’s such a fast-paced story. It moves so quickly. It’s very modern in that respect. You never get bogged down in one scene, and suddenly a new atmosphere. There’s suddenly a new emotion. You’re laughing, and now I’m crying. What’s happening? And that will always transcend eras. If there’s a good story with good characters, that’s going to last.” “Second reason: I think the issues that Dickens was dealing with, the reason he wrote it — which was to make the public of the time aware of the huge poverty gap that was growing,” Gerald said. “Those issues that he was dealing with are just as relevant today in the 21st century as they were when he wrote them in the 19th century. And I think a lot of people come back to the story for that reason as well, to just think, ‘Yeah, we’ve still got work to do. There’s still issues we need to deal with.'” To understand the issues that Gerald is referring to, one must understand the social climate in which “A Christmas Carol” was written. The novella was written in a span of just six weeks in 1843, Gerald said, during the height of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. “Mill owners and, factory owners were making huge amounts of wealth, and their workers were just right down on the poverty line,” Gerald said. “And that gap was something that Dickens was very, very worried about and felt needed to be exposed.” Charles Dickens felt so passionately about the economic inequality that, according to Gerald, he “was giving a lot of lectures and tours and speeches about this very issue.” This little story is so well-loved that everybody in the audience has their own version of it tucked away in their mind.Gerald Dickens, actor and Charles Dickens’ great-great grandson on “A Christmas Carol” “He wanted to be sure that the children of the poor, of the mill workers, would be educated, because if they weren’t educated, then there was no hope for the next generation.” According to Gerald, in the midst of giving speeches and writing political pamphlets on the matter, his great-great-grandfather realized he could do more to bring the issue to light. That realization gave birth to “A Christmas Carol.” Through the passage of time, the holiday classic has become so entrenched in pop culture that it has spawned words into our lexicon. “Scrooge” and “Bah! Humbug!” have been used and heard countless times throughout the decades. “This little story is so well-loved that everybody in the audience has their own version of it tucked away in their mind. Whether that’s listening to a grandparent reading it to them when they’re a kid, or it’s seeing the Muppets version, or it’s seeing Alastair Sim or the big community theater or musical production in their hometown,” Gerald said. “Whatever it is, everybody’s got their own telling of the story tucked away.” This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less