Did Charles Dickens Invent Christmas?

guardian.co.uk:

Although Charles Dickens is frequently credited with inventing Christmas and a whole new literary genre with a certain 1843 novella about Ebenezer Scrooge, four ghosts and a little boy called Tiny Tim, this is not entirely accurate. A Christmas Carol was by no means the first literary representation of what we have come to recognise as a traditional festive season. But Dickens's most adapted text has indubitably shaped the way in which we think about and celebrate the festive season today, and its archetypal resonance has ensured that it remains relevant nearly 170 years after its publication.

Read the whole story: guardian.co.uk

Comments

[blogisti]

05:45 PM on 12/08/2010

A Christmas Carol, is the most wondrous, beautiful, moving stories ever published. Dickens was a pure genius! I say put it in the Bible and read it after the Christmas Story every year. If there is an immanent God then He inspired this story and Dickens was merely the transcriber. Year in and year out I am touched and renewed by this story. Thank God for Dickens.

[thebigbike]

09:06 PM on 12/07/2010

Eugene Manlove Rhodes story "The Bar Cross Liar" about a boy working on a large ranch sending all of his money home to dead broke family set about 1880, published in "OutWest about 1902 and republished unfortunately only in a tiny imited editon of 100

"Christmas Jenny" by Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) about a New England recluse with rep for being cranky, who has taken in an abondoned deaf child, and numerous animals, showing the local MInister the meaning of caring.


The Peterkin's Christmas Tree by Lucretia P. Hale a terribly ecentric New England family cuts a Christmas tree far too big for the room , and have to cut a hole in the ceiling so as not to shorten the tree.

"Christmas by Injunction" by O Henry. A Rocky Mountain miner who has struck it rich goes to the nearest mining camp bound and determined to show all the kids the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER. But ... there's no kids living in the mining camp So he borrows one who is totally unmoved by the Christmas Spirit.

For another one to shed a tear or two to: "Soldier of Time", the first chapter of a book called Bugles in the Night, (1927) by Barrry Benefield Set in a small cotton town in Louisiana about 1900, the hero is an elderly unmarried cotton merchant. It is almost an anthropolically correct description of the customs of this part of the country.

[YeahAnd]

04:54 PM on 12/07/2010

I thought Christmas was originally German???

[WoollyMittens]

04:08 PM on 12/07/2010

So with current abomination that goes for copyright law, Christmas would have to be licensed from a publisher.

[FPhoebe]

08:45 PM on 12/09/2010

I'm sure the copyrights for Charles Dickens' novels have long since expired. That's why you can get his and other classics for free using an e-reader.