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

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford

This book looks at how Dickens's Christmas Carol influenced our current Christmas traditions. It starts with background of the life of Dickens, pivots to the history of Christmas, then wraps it all together. Then as a bonus, the full text of A Christmas Carol is included at the end. (Thank you Public Domain!)

Charles Dickens had a rough childhood. His parents were regularly living above their means. They did not have significant vices. However, despite a decent job, his father always managed to spend more than he earned. Charles would work jobs to support his family. Eventually he got a writing job, and later started publishing novels. He was earning money. However, copyright was not extremely strong at the time, especially in America, leading to various low-priced clones of his work. A Christmas Carol was written in part as a way to earn money.

Society had an interesting relationship with Christmas. It was the merging of a pagan holiday with Christianity. There were long periods of drinking involved. Puritans condemned Christmas revelery. Things gradually did calm down to something closer to what we have today. Father Christmas transformed to Santa Claus. The tradition started to become more about family and giving. Dickens's work helped push this narrative.

The book was successful, but the production was expensive. The following few years, he produced additional Christmas novellas that made him huge amounts of money. They were well received at the time, but did not have the long term impact as the original. He later stopped the novellas and focussed on his novels. He also wrote for newspapers (though he took perhaps a bit too much control - especially in defense of his failing marriage.) 

A Christmas Story

I have seen so many different versions of this story that I thought I knew it well. Alas, I didn't the actual work is a darker ghost story than many of the movie versions. It does still follow the basic story line as Scrooge learns that his love of money does not make him a loved person.