How Charles Dickens changed Christmas
Christmas is here and humanity is agog with friends and family, goodwill greetings and gifting. What many do not know is that the yuletide was not always like this.
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Christmas carols, Santa Claus and children’s parties were not parts of the plot and props of the event.
Charles Dickens, the man whose hometown I had the chance to visit in Kent, UK, is generally considered the greatest proponent of the modern Christmas. Yes, for centuries before then the yuletide tradition had persisted but only as a church or believers’ ritual.
Christmas as we know it today is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by Charles Dickens. Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered festival of generosity.
He influenced many aspects of Christmas that are celebrated today such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit.
But who really is this man? Dickens was a Victorian novelist who remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and characters.
Actually, the year 2012 marked the 200th birth anniversary of this English novelist.
Remember David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and The Pickwick Papers? These are just but a few of the novels that Dickens gifted to world literature. For some of us learners of English, these were the writings that gave us the foundation to use the Queen’s language with confidence and imagination.
Charles Dickens’ writings also influenced civilisation in a number of ways. More than that, these works exposed social ills and class inequalities.
As Karl Marx said, Dickens and the other novelists of Victorian England, "...issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together..."
The English writer had a very difficult childhood. In fact, poverty forced him to leave away from his biological parents. Because of this, he advocated Christmas as a time to make children feel loved and happy. Charles Dickens’ tough childhood also influenced the shaping of his characters.
The characters in his novels —especially their typically whimsical names—are among the most memorable in English literature, so much so that after two centuries a young Nigerian artiste, D’Banj, could name a song after one of these characters—Oliver Twist.
But there is a whole bunch of other characters such as The Artful Dodger, Fagin, Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss Havisham, Charles Darnay, David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber, Abel Magwitch, Daniel Quilp, Samuel Pickwick, Wackford Squeers and Uriah Heep.
These fictional personalities and many others still appear so real. They were also so well known and could be believed to be living a life outside the novels that their stories have been continued by other authors.
Back to Christmas. Dickens created the concept of Christmas as a holiday time to be with family and for charity. How exactly did he do it? With one stroke (as if writing takes only a stroke), his novel A Christmas Carol.
In the spirit of the season and because I loved stories, let me let you on what happens in this beloved novel written in 1843 next week.
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