The celebration Dickens built

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 11th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A Christmas Carol.

Charles Dickens’ story is one of the most well- known Christmas classic.

This novella—written in 1843—has inspired countless retellings, spoofs, and spin-offs. The Internet Movie Database alone lists over 200 different films and TV episodes with the Scrooge theme.

MICKEY MOUSE: Oh, ah, good morning Mr. Scrooge!

Everyone from Mickey Mouse…

CAST: There goes Mr. Humbug, there goes Mr. Grim!

To the Muppets…

CAST: If they gave a prize for being mean, the winner would be him!

…has their own version of the story.

REICHARD: But, while most people know exactly where “Bah-humbug” came from…fewer know the story behind it—or the role A Christmas Carol played in making our Christmas celebrations what they are now.

Here’s WORLD’s Grace Snell with that story.

BELLE: Oh, it’s the parade!

IRVING: Yes, it’s the smallest parade!

GRACE SNELL: A lone pickup rolls into sight in Skaneateles, New York. It’s pulling a single float topped with a small brass band.

AUDIO: [Sound of band playing Jingle Bells…]

This is the town’s much-heralded World’s Smallest Christmas Parade—kickoff to the annual Dickens Christmas festival.

AUDIO: [Sound of Jingle Bells playing, bystander clapping along…]

CONSTABLE: Oh, my! How lovely. How short!

It’s a bitterly cold and blustery day. But that hasn’t stopped a crowd from gathering—including a whole cast of Christmas Carol characters decked out in Victorian finery. Mr. Fezziwig, Belle, Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim, to name a few.

CROWD: Clapping and cheering…

And, leading the way, is the man of the hour.

GREENE: Nice to see you all! Thanks for joining us. I’m the world renowned author Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens—played by the show’s producing director Jim Greene.

GREENE: Mayhaps you’ve read some of my stories? It was the best of times…

CROWD: It was the worst of times!

Dickens was a literary sensation in his own time—renowned for novels like A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist. But his name is forever tied to Christmas because of one small book: A Christmas Carol.

GREENE: Now ladies and gentlemen, we are so excited to be here. Her majesty has asked me to work on a new Christmas story…

Few other stories have such a firm grasp on the popular Christmas imagination. It’s still warming hearts and sparking new interpretations almost 200 years later. But this little story also played an outsized role in reviving Christmas celebrations across England…bringing them roaring back after over a century of decline.

FORBES: Most of us, when we hear that Christmas Carol story, we think, ‘Oh, that’s how Christmas was back in Dickens time.’

That’s Bruce Forbes—a holiday historian and author of Christmas: A Candid History. He says A Christmas Carol wasn’t a portrait of Victorian Christmas at the time.

FORBES: He is writing this story to bring back Christmas to what he thought it was a century or more ago…

CAROLERS: Singing outside Sherwood Inn…

Old Christmas traditions aren’t always well-documented. But, from what we do know, early English celebrations were a wild thing—a mashup of winter revelries and religious rites.

FORBES: You just have had a lot of festivities kissing under the mistletoe and you have parties…

Then, in the 1600s, English Puritans tried to stamp out Christmas celebrations, based on two main objections.

FORBES: Number one, it’s not early Christianity, so we’re not called to do it. And number two, ‘Is there too much wild partying?’

Parliament even went as far as banning Christmas in 1647.

FORBES: At some points, they would send town criers around on Christmas Eve, crying, ‘No Christmas, no Christmas!”

And it largely worked. Some people still went to Christmas services over the following decades. But Christmas wasn’t the same cultural phenomenon anymore.

FORBES: For a century or more, Christmas remains diminished.

A survey of stories from The London Times between 1790 and 1836 shows just how much Christmas had fallen out of favor.

FORBES: In 20 years of those, nothing is said about Christmas. In the other 25, it’s mentioned only briefly, and it’s kind of with the sense of, ‘That’s something some people used to do a long time ago.’

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in just six weeks. He published it a few days before Christmas, on December 19th, 1843.

The public reaction was instant.

FORBES: It just sells out, and it’s just this amazing success. And it quickly gets reprinted, reprinted over and over again in the few years following.

The story quickly became a best-seller in America, too. In 1868, Dickens sailed to the United States to perform dramatic readings of his books, including A Christmas Carol.

FORBES: It’s like he’s a rock star. One hundred fifty people wait overnight to get tickets in Boston. The tickets sell out.

A Christmas Carol expressed Dickens’ deep concern for the poor in his country. The story of Ebeneezer Scrooge’s transformation grabbed hold of the public mind and added a new layer of meaning to the holiday—one which laid the groundwork for widespread Christmas celebrations—even among those who don’t believe Christ came as a baby in a manger.

FORBES: Generosity becomes the theme that people can embrace, whether they’re Christian or not, or very religious or not. Generosity is a beautiful thing, and it’s, I think, Dickens’ Christmas Carol’s greatest contribution. It shifts what Christmas becomes.

For others, A Christmas Carol is a story pointing back to the true Giver of all good gifts, and the best gift of all: His Son.

All these years later, Charles Dickens’ story is still very much alive and well. And on the streets of Skaneateles, the Dickens Christmas festival is in full swing.

CROWD: We wish you a Merry Christmas! We wish you a Merry Christmas! We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell in Skaneateles, New York.

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