Dec. 25, 2015 Writer's Almanac

Today is Christmas Day. Many of our Christmas traditions here in America came to us from England - specifically, Victorian England of the 19th century. In fact, there are some who credit Charles Dickens with inventing the holiday, at least as we know it today. In early 19th-century Britain, rural workers were moving to the cities in droves. They left behind the Christmas traditions of their home regions, but they didn't really adopt the practices of city dwellers, either. The holiday was slowly waning, and by mid-century, middle-aged Britons had begun to feel nostalgic for the holidays of their youth, even as they adapted to new customs like the Christmas tree, a tradition imported by Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert. The American writer Washington Irving spent time in England and fell in love with some of the old Christmas traditions that were fading away. He believed - and Charles Dickens later agreed - that a revival of old Christmas traditions would promote social harmony. But by the mid-19th century, few could afford to take off "the twelve days of Christmas" to celebrate the season, as they once had. Conditions for industrial workers and miners were very bad, and Dickens - who had himself worked in a blacking factory as a boy - became determined to "strike a sledgehammer blow" for the poor. He also thought a great deal about the Christmas traditions of his father's boyhood in the country: games, dancing, mulled wine, Christmas pudding, and a fat roasted goose. Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol contains both of these elements - an appeal to care for the less fortunate as an act of Christian charity, and a celebration of that cozy country Christmas that Dickens imagined so fondly. The story was an instant success, and Dickens found himself obligated to churn out a new Christmas story on a regular basis for many years. He grumbled, but he really did love the holiday. As his son later remembered, Christmas was, for Dickens, "a great time, a really jovial time, and my father was always at his best, a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy and throwing his heart and soul into everything that was going on [...] And then the dance! There was no stopping him!"