Yes, Virginia, Charles Dickens did invent Christmas, at least the Christmas spirit of giving to the poor as well as the presumption and posturing of the rich. As everyone knows, it was 1843 and Dickens had spent his hard-earned cash like an oil-rich camel driver. He was only 31, but he had a large family to feed and felt he was slowly sliding toward oblivion. So he walked the Manchester streets and decided to stop browbeating his readers and return to plain story telling. That’s when A Christmas Carol took shape, and he continued developing it in his mind once back in London. In six weeks he had 30,000 words, and we have had Ignorance and Want, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, Scrooge and Marley ever since. Oh, yes, A Christmas Carol was an exercise in vanity publishing, as Dickens’s publishers, Chapman & Hall, expressed so little enthusiasm for it the author put up his own moolah.
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