A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens is forever associated with Christmas. It was reported that when he died in 1870 a costermonger’s daughter was overheard to say, “Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?”
Perhaps his feelings about Christmas are best summed up by one of his children who recorded that for Dickens, Christmas was “a great time, a really jovial time, and my father was always at his best, a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy and throwing his heart and soul into everything that was going on...”
Dickens himself defined its essence through the words he placed in the mouth of Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, inA Christmas Carol, when he describes the season as “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” For the author this speech was to encapsulate what became known as his ‘Carol Philosophy.’
The tradition of Christmas celebration had gradually declined in the early nineteenth century and as Thomas Hervey noted in his writings, ‘The revels of merry England are fast subsiding into silence and her many customs are wearing gradually away.’ He blamed it on the urban drift by the rural population as towns and cities became the providers of work. Dickens did not invent Christmas, but he certainly helped to resurrect it by moving it to an urban setting — London to be precise — and replacing the manorial hall with the town house while still rousing nostalgia for the Christmas spirit he evoked at Dingley Dell. The idyllic winter countryside had been replaced by the claustrophobic fogbound city of London and the old squirearchy by the burgeoning middle class and the urban working poor. As Professor Richard Kelly points out in his edition ofA Christmas Carol, ‘Dickens seems to be saying Christmas can now be celebrated by anyone; its rituals and joys are no longer the exclusive province of the upper classes in their country estates.’
Washington Irving, an American writer greatly admired by Dickens, was a significant influence upon his Christmas writings. Irving travelled extensively in Europe and inBracebridge Hall he celebrated the Christmas festivities and traditions of rural England. Although Prince Albert had introduced the Christmas tree to English households, the first Christmas card was sent in 1843 and the singing of carols was undergoing a revival, the real catalyst was the publication of
