Dickens and Christmas
Many of the ideas and visuals that we associate with Christmas today began in the Victorian and with Dickens. In 1843, Dickens began writing one of his most popular and best-loved stories, A Christmas Carol. The books so perfectly expressed the moral teaching of Christ as well as the English celebration of that season that is became an inseparable part of the English speaks tradition of Christmas. Dickens rich portrayal of Christmas activities like Christmas feast and Christmas parties were used to instruct Victorians on how to conduct festive activities, while his metaphorical and symbolic portrayals of the characters such as Scrooge, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, as well as the Cratchits and Tiny Tim, to illustrate the morals of Christmas.
The Christmas that Dickens portrays in the Christmas Stories and A Christmas Carol is very different from the Christmas seen before the 1830s. At the time of the English Reformation the practice of Christmas was retained, as were other holy days, but there was a strong Calvinist and Puritan theology that argues that only what was explicitly commanded in Scripture was allowed for Christian worship. When the Westminster Directory was substituted for the Prayer Book under the Commonwealth Christmas was abolished. Although the abolition of Christmas was by no means universal accepted, but it did drastically change the practice of Christmas until the restoration of Charles II (1658) when the Anglican church was restores and Christmas was once agains freely practiced.
By the Victorian period Christmas was once again a widely celebrated holiday, yet the Christmas that we now celebrate; with Christmas trees, wreathes and holly decorations, was only an invention of the late 1800s and became widely practiced with the help of Dickens..
The Christmas that Dickens portrays in the Christmas Stories and A Christmas Carol is very different from the Christmas seen before the 1830s. At the time of the English Reformation the practice of Christmas was retained, as were other holy days, but there was a strong Calvinist and Puritan theology that argues that only what was explicitly commanded in Scripture was allowed for Christian worship. When the Westminster Directory was substituted for the Prayer Book under the Commonwealth Christmas was abolished. Although the abolition of Christmas was by no means universal accepted, but it did drastically change the practice of Christmas until the restoration of Charles II (1658) when the Anglican church was restores and Christmas was once agains freely practiced.
By the Victorian period Christmas was once again a widely celebrated holiday, yet the Christmas that we now celebrate; with Christmas trees, wreathes and holly decorations, was only an invention of the late 1800s and became widely practiced with the help of Dickens..
Christmas in the 1800s
The decorations that are lavishly described in A Christmas Carol include a Christmas Tree, a new addition to the English Christmas that was imported to England in the Victorian. Dickens first Christmas stories which appeared in Household Words in 1850, begins with a wonderful evocation of the magic of the Christmas Tree:
I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lit by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches... there were French polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping... there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint- boxes, sweetmeat boxes, peep-show- boxes... there were tee-totums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises.
Dickens used the Christmas tree as a kind of medieval memory system, tracing the association of Christmas down the branches of the tree. As the Waits' music sounds from the street, he links the powerful images of the Christmas story, with the presents of childhood. In the light of grace and Christmas "all common things become uncommon, and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flowerpots are full of treasure." In all of Dickens Christmas stories, including A Christmas Carol, there is a themes of transfigurations and conversion that is so central to the theme of Christmas even today.
Although others, like Prince Albert, did contribute to the changing face of Christmas, but it was Dickens who contributed the most. Today, after more than 160 years, A Christmas Carol continues to be relevant, sending a message that cuts through the materialistic trappings of the season and gets to the heart and soul of the holidays.
Dickens' describes the holidays 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." This was what Dickens described for the rest of his life as the "Carol Philosophy".
Dickens' name had become so synonymous with Christmas that on hearing of his death in 1870 a little costermonger's girl in London asked, "Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?"
I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lit by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches... there were French polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping... there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint- boxes, sweetmeat boxes, peep-show- boxes... there were tee-totums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises.
Dickens used the Christmas tree as a kind of medieval memory system, tracing the association of Christmas down the branches of the tree. As the Waits' music sounds from the street, he links the powerful images of the Christmas story, with the presents of childhood. In the light of grace and Christmas "all common things become uncommon, and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flowerpots are full of treasure." In all of Dickens Christmas stories, including A Christmas Carol, there is a themes of transfigurations and conversion that is so central to the theme of Christmas even today.
Although others, like Prince Albert, did contribute to the changing face of Christmas, but it was Dickens who contributed the most. Today, after more than 160 years, A Christmas Carol continues to be relevant, sending a message that cuts through the materialistic trappings of the season and gets to the heart and soul of the holidays.
Dickens' describes the holidays 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." This was what Dickens described for the rest of his life as the "Carol Philosophy".
Dickens' name had become so synonymous with Christmas that on hearing of his death in 1870 a little costermonger's girl in London asked, "Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?"