“Jesus is the reason for the season,” yea, verily. But “the man who invented Christmas”? That title, by general acclaim, belongs to Charles Dickens on the basis of A Christmas Carol, the beloved tale that reanimates every December in every conceivable medium and mutation.
A magical mix of Victorian-era ghost story and Yuletide fable, Dickens’ most popular novel is stuffed with all the trappings of the season — snowy streets and sidewalk carolers, Christmas goose and Christmas pudding, and, of course, joyous fireside gatherings. But at the core of the story is a ringing Christian message founded in redemption and charity — Scrooge’s conversion from selfishness to selflessness.
Interestingly, these same themes are even more prominent in one of the author’s least popular works, The Life of Our Lord, which was chiefly adapted from St. Luke’s Gospel. This slim volume was intended not for publication but expressly for reading aloud to his children (there were eight of them when he finished the work: the eldest, Charles Jr., having been born in 1837, and the youngest, Henry, in 1849). Written during the late 1840s while Dickens was polishing off David Copperfield, The Life was referred to as an “easy version” of the Gospels and oftentimes as The Children’s New Testament.
Years later, in a letter to a clergyman, Dickens wrote: “There cannot be many men, I believe, who have a more humble veneration for the New Testament, or a more profound conviction of its all-sufficiency than I have.”
“My Dear Children,” the text begins, “I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ. For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill of miserable, as he was.”
The Dickens’ Family Secret
For 85 years, the manuscript remained a precious family secret and was given to the world only after the death of Henry, Dickens’ youngest, in 1934, making it his last published work. (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, famously unfinished at the author’s death, was published more than a quarter-century earlier in 1870.)
Due, no doubt, to its unusual provenance and childlike simplicity, the little book was generally dismissed as a literary curiosity and consigned to Dickens’ minor works. But this intimate letter to his children is well worth reading, not only for its gentle narrative charm but what it tells us about the author’s inner life.
Suspicious of organized religion and known for skewering hypocrisy in the church (and elsewhere), Dickens preferred to call himself a New Testament Christian. He wanted his novels to be “parables,” stories that would emphasize the teachings of Christ.
“All my good people,” he confided once, “are humble, charitable, faithful, and forgiving. Over and over again, I claim them in express words as disciples of the Founder of our religion.”
Dickens’ faith was made explicit in his will: “I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man’s narrow construction of its letter here or there.”
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens clearly knew how to keep Christmas well.
By Dan Pollock
