Scrooge and Company
Christmas celebration as we know it began just 177 years ago
It was 177 years ago today that the Christmas celebration as we know it was more or less born. No, we are not speaking of the Christ child who is the true reason for the season. We refer instead to the traditions and customs by which we in the English-speaking world mark that day. They largely come from a single work of literature. A remarkable and much-loved volume first published in December 1843.
It’s a tale of holiday redemption that has been translated into every known language and filmed dozens of times in motion picture and television adaptations. And it’s a work that gave the world perhaps the most universally known character in all of literature — a London financier and skinflint who is able to find the true spirit of Christmas. A charming old fellow by the name of Ebeneezer Scrooge.
The celebrated British author Charles Dickens wrote the book originally called “A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas” as a quick way to pay off some debts. But the slim tale proved extremely popular, selling a then-remarkable 6,000 copies in the first week.
It has never been out of print since.
What Dickens could never have foreseen was the cultural impact his work would have. He wove commentary on poverty and want, cruelty and the class system into the story, as he so frequently did. But it was his simple message of Christmas that brought real and lasting change to the world.
Christmas had fallen on hard times in England, where dour Protestant leaders discouraged celebrations on the grounds that the holiday had become too materialistic, and it was not much celebrated in the United States at all, The themes of Dickens’ book — redemption, forgiveness, charity, family, feasts and good cheer — struck a chord with the people of England and America and is widely seen as reviving the celebration of Christmas in both lands and fixing in our minds how a proper Christmas is to be enjoyed.
There have been other influences on Christmas over the years, of course. But none so lasting as that of Dickens, Scrooge and company.
The tale of the three spirits has ensured the Christmas spirit lives with all of us right up to today.