This Fan Theory Explains Why Scrooge Is Such a Scrooge in A Christmas Carol

Scrooge is the OG Christmas crank—but as it turns out, he might have a very valid reason for being all "bah humbug" during the holidays (and, well, throughout the entire year). One dedicated (and history-loving) Redditor theorizes that Scrooge is so, well, Scrooge-like because he lived through the Napoleonic Wars and survived some serious economic hardships as a result. This Reddit hypothesis is rather long-winded and reads somewhat like a school term paper, so we've boiled down all of the important points surrounding this Christmas mystery for you below.

__According to the Redditor's math, Scrooge was about 60 years old in A Christmas Carol. __ Based on the fact that the Dickens' novel was published in 1843, and Scrooge is consistently described and illustrated as an elderly, gray-haired old man, the fan surmises that Scrooge was around 60 in the story—making him born in 1783.

Which means that good ol' Ebenezer was 20 years old in 1803. That's the year that Britain declared war on France, and the decade-long Napoleonic Wars kicked off. As a result of these wars, several trade embargoes were enacted against Britain—which is a fancy way of saying times were tough.

Why is this important? Consider this: The Redditor writes, "When you consider that Scrooge was in his early 20s when all this was going on, and likely just striking out on his own and trying to make money, you can understand why he might have grown up into a surly old miser with a chip on his shoulder. If you had seen thousands of your countrymen starving on the streets while a war with a mad dictator raged across a narrow channel, wouldn't you be a little bit afraid of winding up on the streets too? Wouldn't you probably spend a lot of time scrimping and saving, always making sure you had enough to feed yourself?"