Did Charles Dickens Invent Christmas?

By Murray Ellison and John Schofield

The inspiration for our present topic and question, began last summer when John Schofield (a literary researcher) and I were teaching a class on Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel, David Copperfield. John made a statement that Dickens had helped to invent the modern ways we celebrate Christmas! As this was a surprise to me, I asked him to conduct some research on the topic for a future class.  Since then, Schofield explored this topic in-depth, and as a result, we led 3 two-hour Zoom classes on Charles Dickens and his most popular book, A Christmas Carol by for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Richmond (VA) in December 2021.

The first hour of the class was dedicated to John’s research, and in the remaining classes, the 62 enrolled students took turns reading and discussing Dicken’s most story. Schofield’s research also helped students to gain a greater understanding of the main themes of the story and how Dickens drew much of the story from his surroundings in London and from some situations in his own family.

According to Schofield’s final research, Dickens should be considered as a major catalyst,  but not the inventor of many of the ways that we now celebrate Christmas.  However, his influence on the already changing 19^th Century attitudes of Christmas was significant. One of his primary sources was The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N. Wilson, who states:

His (Dickens) cult of Christmas, in which he led his contemporaries, was a cult not of old superstition but of kindness and generosity.

“The better-off Victorians realized –as they looked about their rural communities, impoverished on imported corn; at the wretchedness of Irish peasants, soon to be starved in their millions; at the cities into which rural workers had fled, to be overworked, from childhood onwards, down mines, in mills and factories and refineries—that their beliefs in Free Trade and Industry and Progress had brought into being a nightmare.  Their cult of Christmas was part of their attempt to fight back in the name of decency.” During Dickens’ lifetime, the old celebration of Twelfth Night gradually was reduced to a single long day long from December 24 (Christmas Eve) through December 25 (Wilson).

The rising Victorian middle-class was literate with a lot of disposable income. Even the lower-class populace was becoming more literate due to increasing free public education. Advancements in rapid printing methods and distribution sources of printed materials undoubtedly helped to elevate greater interest and availability of Dickens’ popular works to the masses.  Dickens and manufacturers stoked the desire to have more of the traditions of the past with the needs of an active society. A Christmas Carol was a major influence but so were the many new manufacturing products that followed it. The concept of preprinted Christmas Cards was first popularized during this period, as was the idea of celebrating Christmas with a Christmas turkey dinner. The following illustrates both trends:

A Christmas Carol can be seen on several layers 1) just a cracking good story about good winning out over evil, 2) a call for action to help elevate the poor and starving before it was too late (Ignorance and Want), and 3) a political statement against the institutions of the day. It is also a great book. Of course, there have been several movies and plays about Dickens and A Christmas Carol, including the 2017 film, The Man Who Invented Christmas, and the 1984 Christmas Carol movie with George C. Scott (See this Litchatte Cover Photo).

Earlier History of Christmas

December 25 as Christmas Day (the birth of Christ) was established by Pope Julius in about 400 AD. This period is now identified around the Roman Feast of Saturnalia (December 17 to December 23). By the time Christianity was becoming the dominant religion the two holidays (festivals) were moving together into a single holiday. The two holidays (festivals) had much in common; gift-giving, feasting, “king of Saturnalia” and “the king of misrule” By medieval times, the holiday had become more spiritual than secular. The Industrial Revolution began to establish a literate middle-class that was nostalgic for lost traditions and family participation. Three writers who had much to do with this transition are:

• • • • • • • • • • Clement Moore-’The Night Before Christmas’ published in the UK in 1843)
                  • Charles Dickens- A Christmas Carol (1843)
                  • Washington Irving-The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820)

Washington Irving was living in England. As he toured, he wrote sketches about what he saw and who he had met.  Many were nostalgic sketches designed to look backward.  The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent was the publication that began the transition to a new Christmas celebration.  Included in the Sketchbook was the first appearance of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.  Dickens wrote Christmas stories and storied published at Christmas time for his entire career.  The Christmas Tree was his first holiday-themed work and was published in Sketches by Boz.  His second holiday-themed piece was The Story of the Goblins who Stole the Sexton.  It was published as a minor story in The Pickwick Papers (1836).  The supernatural goblins intrigued him and his readers during this period when Gothic literature was very popular. To that fascination, Dickens added a supernatural theme to A Christmas Carol (1843). From this point forward he would always publish a new story for the holidays, but they ceased to be holiday-themed.  His readers didn’t care about the lack of holiday stories.  They just wanted to read a new piece by Dickens at Christmas. His next four holiday published books were The Chimes (1844), the Cricket and the Hearth (1845, The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghosts Bargain (1848). In 1849, Dickens bought a small newspaper Household Words which became the vehicle for his next round of stories published for the holiday trade.  He began to experiment with several ways of producing these stories.  He would assign various story topics to his writer friends (as well as himself) that would become the holiday volume.  Or he would develop a story outline and assign various bits to his friends to complete.  Six annual stories were produced in this way.

 Dickens and his Characters in A Christmas Carol

In October 1843, Dickens was invited to speak, along with Benjamin Disraeli and Richard Cobden, at the Manchester Athenaeum.  The event was a fundraiser to support its programs in adult education.  It was a tremendous success and gave his spirits a boost.  Also, on this trip, he stayed with his older sister, Fanny, and met her five-year-old disabled son, Harry.  Both his sister and nephew became characters in his upcoming book. John Forester, his friend and first biographer, stated that after Dickens returned home from this speaking engagement he began to write the book in six weeks.  The children ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Want’ developed from this trip.

Scrooge was really Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie of Edinburg.  Dickens saw his tombstone in a walk around town in 1836.  While Scroggie was a notorious womanizer and scandalmonger, the venal aspects of Scrooge came from two of Dickens’ enemies-Thomas Malthus and John Elwes. Both of these are now most remembered as promoters of the idea of increasing the population stock by decreasing the “undesirables” with less value.

Ol’ Fran of A Christmas Carol was his sister Franny. Tiny Tim was Fran’s son who was five at the time of publication, who probably suffered from Ricketts. Fred was Dickens’ brother Frederick. Marley’s name was picked up in a trip to Dorset where he toured a tin mine. The Cratchits, some reviewers and scholars think, may be represented by his father and mother, and Belle may have been Maria Beadnell (his former fiance) or Catherine (his wife). While Dickens did not identify the counting-house of Scrooge and Marley, it may have been located on Cornhill Street in the City. The City of London establishes it as ‘Dickens Walk’ and identifies its location as Newman’s Court.

By 1860, Christmas Became a National Obsession in England

By the 1860s, the celebration of Christmas had become a national obsession.  Christmas trees could be seen in homes and public spaces all around England and accepted as parts of the season and shops were enjoying the start of the new fashion for Christmas shopping.  The invention of the Christmas cracker was also perfected by the 1860s. The Christmas card came in the early 1840s when postal rates were reduced by half. Another Christmas craze reached Britain from Germany.—glass baubles to hang on the tree as well as placing an angel on the top of the tree.  Christmas food hampers became very popular. By 1861, there was a noticeable shift from celebrating Twelfth Night to just celebrating Christmas Eve/Day. The Day after Christmas (Boxing Day) also began another day of festivities, as those with means let their servants off, presumably giving them their gift boxes to reuse for family and friends.

Perhaps it is only an apocryphal story, but upon hearing of Dickens’s death, a young charwoman cried out “Then will Father Christmas die too?”

In the next blog, I shall look at some of the themes and symbols of A Christmas Carol. Please leave comments on this blog in the dialogue box below.

Murray Ellison received a Master’s in English Literature from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Doctorate in Education at Virginia Tech. He is married and has three adult daughters and a young granddaughter! He ‘retired’ as the Director of Community Corrections for the Virginia Department of Correctional Education in 2009. His MA thesis, on Edgar Allan Poe and 19th-Century Science, was published in 2015 and is now available online. He founded Litchatte.com and is still its chief editor.  Currently, he serves as the Outreach Coordinator for the First Mennonite Church of Richmond(VA) and also contributes to music there with his guitar. He is an editor for the International Correctional Education Journal, and a Co-Editor of two books by Acharya Shambhushivananda, including Mystic Verses(2016). He has also edited many other professional projects. He serves as a volunteer tour guide for the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond Virginia. For a decade, he has been teaching literature and music classes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Richmond, LLI Chesterfield, and The Shepherd’s Center Open University. He teaches adjunct English and writing classes at Richard Bland College of William & Mary College when tapped, and they are not in pandemic mode. He founded the RVA Classic Book Club in 2017 and has been the Coordinator since then.

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