Inventing Christmas as we know it
“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
Early illustration by John Leech, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
What sort of Scrooge could say such a thing, you ask? Why, Charles Dickens’ Scrooge, of course, the original meanie himself. If you haven’t read A Christmas Carol recently, you should go back to give it a try. I did, and I was surprised by the colloquial vigor of much of the language and the power of the familiar story to move me.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stage or screen version of it that has really touched me all that much, but reading it straight through the other night I was astonished to find myself with big tears dripping down my cheeks as I turned the last page.…
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