Talk:A Hearth's Warming Tail/@comment-27073262-20160720170025/@comment-10390252-20170403084905

Further to Digidux - Charles Dickens was known to write exaggerated versions of real people with changed names as villains or comedic bumblers in his novels, especially those novels that revolved around his social campaigning against poverty and the abuse of the poor (for example David Copperfield is now widely seen by Dickens experts as a somewhat-fictionalised autobiography). There is some reason to believe that Ebenezer Scrooge was one of these.

That said, in reply to the OP, I doubt that such a complex bit of meta-story was ever discussed or even considered when this episode was written.