![]() ![]() ![]() Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, Scrooges all, had banned any celebration of the holiday in the 1600s the subsequent advent of the Industrial Revolution kept factories humming with nary a thought for yuletide. Ebenezer Scrooge remains one of the great villains of literature, “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” winding his way through the snowy back alleys of mid-19 th Century London with a sneering “Bah, humbug!” at the ready for any urchin unfortunate enough to cross his path.īut with the help of four spirits over five “staves,” Scrooge transforms from heartless skinflint to vessel of charity and mercy, discovering the magic of a season that, in the salving words of his sunny nephew, Fred, represents “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.”Įngland had been in something of a Christmas hangover before Dickens’ shimmering little chronicle changed everything. ![]() ![]() It’s been 178 years since Charles Dickens, stung by commercial indifference to his most recent novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, spent six weeks walking deserted streets after midnight for inspiration, returning to his fashionable townhouse to madly scribble out a novella that would forever change the way we celebrate the yuletide. ![]()
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