Sometimes, for some of us, getting into the Christmas spirit can be more than a little difficult. Whether it is due to the increasingly larger tidal wave of commercialism that comes with the season, the bickering over the religious aspects of the holiday, or just the fear and loathing of spending a large amount of time with extended family, many of us are inclined to echo the words of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ classic work, A Christmas Carol, “Bah! Humbug!”
Though most everyone is familiar with Dickens’ work as well as the phrase itself, and we realise that it is an indication that Scrooge does not like Christmas, the actual meaning of the word humbug seems to escape us.
Originating in 1751 as a type of student slang, the word was originally defined as a sort of trick, hoax, or type of deception. As for where or how the word originated, while there are many theories, none have actually been proven. Possible origin locations and languages range from Norse/Scandinavian (hum bugges “shadow apparitions”) to Italian (uomo bugiardo “lying man”) to Irish (Uim-bog) to German, even to common Middle English.
A gigantic humbug
Though many of us tend to only associate the word with the Christmas spirit (or lack of it, for some), this slang term achieved a much wider usage throughout the 19th century. For example, in Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Coningsby (1844), he remarked: “A government of statesmen, or of clerks? Of Humbug or of Humdrum?,” while Lord Churchill wrote in the Western Daily Press in 1884 that: “The whole legislature of the Government had been a gigantic humbug, a stupendous imposture, and a prodigious fraud.”
So, to relate it back to what we know from Dickens, we can see that, when Scrooge says, “Bah! Humbug!,” what he is really saying is that Christmas is a bunch of foolishness and unnecessary, which naturally fits in with the character of the unrepentant, miserly, harsh Scrooge.
Looking at the differences between the early Victorian ideals depicted in Dickens and our modern interpretation of the holiday, which often involves more Christmas spending than Christmas spirit, it is tempting to say that, in many ways, Scrooge has been vindicated. However, as Scrooge himself learned, there are more important things than simply the price of a gift, and that’s no humbug.
