"The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' Rescued his Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits"

An interesting piece on the History of Christmas. Tip your hat, I prefer Kermit over Gene Lockhart any day.


For all the strengths that are evident to the modern eye in A Christmas Carol, and despite his own confidence in the power of his tale, Dickens had at least two good reasons to be apprehensive as publication day for his story approached. One had to do with the nature of the holiday itself, and the other with the dire financial straits he found himself in.

As for the first, Christmas in 1843 was not at all the pre-mier occasion that it is today, when Christmas stories and their Grinches and elves and Santas abound, when "Christ-mas stores" purvey Yule decorations the four seasons round, and a marketing effort that begins sometime in mid-October is said to determine the fate of an entire year for retailers.

There were no Christmas cards in 1843 England, no Christmas trees at royal residences or White Houses, no Christmas turkeys, no department-store Santa or his million clones, no outpouring of "Yuletide greetings," no weeklong cessation of business affairs through the New Year, no orgy of gift-giving, no ubiquitous public display of nativity scenes (or court fights regarding them), no holiday lighting extrava-ganzas, and no plethora of midnight services celebrating the birth of a savior.

In fact, despite all of Dickens's enthusiasms, the holiday was a relatively minor affair that ranked far be-low Easter, causing little more stir than Memorial Day or St. George's Day does today. In the eyes of the relatively en-lightened Anglican Church, moreover, the entire enterprise of celebrating Christmas smacked vaguely of paganism, and were there Puritans still around, acknowledging the holiday might have landed one in the stocks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122953727828014791.html?mod=googlenews_wsj