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

by Les Standiford

But this quality of writing contributes as much to the book’s ability to work its magic upon readers as do any number of fine and noble sentiments. In such details lie the reasons why Ebenezer Scrooge and his preposterous self-centeredness would live on through history, and why Gabriel Grub, cut from the same thematic bolt of cloth, would not.

Much of Dickens’s enthusiasm for the season transcended religiosity. He was appreciative of the benevolence associated with the example of the Christian savior and embodied in the star atop the tree: “In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World.”

In 1934 Lionel Barrymore starred in a U.S. radio-play adaptation titled A Christmas Carol,

an event that proved so popular that the piece became a holiday tradition that lasted into the 1950s—his brother John Barrymore and Orson Welles successfully took over during two different seasons when Barrymore fell ill.

in 1949 Ronald Colman narrated the first commercial sound recording of the story.

I own this on 78's

In 1984 Clive Donner, who had edited the Alastair Sim production of 1951, directed another well-received British version, A Christmas Carol, starring George C. Scott.

Best version as far as I am concerned

Dickens, though nominally an Anglican, was a vocal critic of organized religion, especially where he saw hypocritical divergences between the preaching and the practice of Christian charity. Many critics have suggested that in his little Christmas fable—whether consciously

or unconsciously—he complemented the glorification of the nativity of Christ with a specific set of practices derived from Christ’s example: charity and compassion in the form of educational opportunity, humane working conditions, and a decent life for all. Just as vital as the celebration of the birth of a holy savior into a human family was the glorification and defense of the family unit itself.

In A Christmas Carol, the chief focus of the reader’s sympathy becomes ...

rather than a Christ child. When Scrooge is treated to a vision of a world in which that child has died, readers instinctively understand that the most important question for the remainder of the narra...

for all its emphasis on the concept of charity, no gifts or gaily wrapped presents appear in A Christmas Carol. Aside from that magnanimous gesture of Scrooge’s to Bob Cratchit at the story’s close, the most valuable gifts exchanged between its characters are those of love and goodwill.

Not quite true, we do see Belle's children opening gifts.

(where mythology equated the fir tree with the tree of life from the Gospels, and transformed it into a symbol for the birth of Christ)

from the Bible, right. The norse might have been involved too.

And while the heartiest of the three Christmas spirits portrayed in A Christmas Carol is of a somewhat different provenance than his American counterpart, there are some interesting parallels.

The Ghost of Christmas Present appears before Scrooge seated atop a mound of plenty, by a roaring fire in a room bedecked with fir boughs, holly, mistletoe, red berries, and ivy,

The Dickens scholar Paul Davis points out that A Christmas Carol inverts the traditional folktale process. Instead of beginning as an oral story that is finally written down and formalized, Dickens’s story has worked the other way. His story entered the world as a fully formed “perfect” work, says Davis, and in the century and a half since its arrival, its original self has exploded like a sun into a supernova.

It is probably the secret dream of many writers to produce a work with such enduring power, and it is one of the several conundrums of the writing life that one can never live to see how it all turns out.

Trotty had been certain that the poor and unfortunate were doomed by their own natures to their sad fates, but now realizes that what has happened to Meg and Richard is the result of the avarice and oppression of others, and not any inborn mark of weakness. All men and women have the capacity to succeed.

If it has no other distinction, its immortal first line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” likely rivals Bulwer-Lytton’s “dark and stormy night” as the best known in the language.

few books have both opening and closing lines as memorable

Michael Patrick Hearn’s exhaustive companion, The Annotated Christmas Carol, is