Yikes!
It’s only the first week of December and I’m already suffering from an overdose of yule.
Barely a minute goes by before someone, from Mercedes Benz to Victoria’s Secret, tries to twist my Christmas goodwill into cash at the till. Santa Claus is more common than the cold, and any turkey that survived Thanksgiving is sure to be done like dinner by December 25.
I blame Charles Dickens, who turned 202 not long after Christmas – Feb. 7, 2012, to be precise. Well, actually he’s dead and has been since 1870. But the man who wrote A Christmas Carol, is no less responsible for Christmas as we know it.
As you know, as it’s impossible to avoid, A Christmas Carol is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserable old fart who sees the error of his ways thanks to being haunted by three very memorable ghosts on Christmas Eve, and becomes an improbably wonderful, kind, generous friend to all, especially his clerk’s frail little son Tiny Tim.
Historians believe Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival prompted by A Christmas Carol. Dickens reintroduced warmth into what had become mainly a religious holiday by immortalizing family feasts, greeting cards, seasonal food and drink, fun and games, and an SUV under every tree.
Even though it was published in 1843, A Christmas Carol is not going away soon. There are 200 million copies in print. It’s been made into a movie at least 20 times, the most recent being the 2009 Disney 3-D version starring Jim Carey as Scrooge.
We are bombarded by the imagery and iconography of this Dickensian Christmas. Holly, yule logs, crackling fires (where would we be without the 24/7 fireplace channel on cable?), gift giving, carols, etc. have been co-opted into an orgy of commercial excess that now begins on or about Halloween, another festival with pagan roots that’s completely out of control.
If we don’t spend more to achieve the perfect Dickensian Christmas this year than we did last year, business commentators scold us for lacking consumer confidence and the market drops.
I suspect that Dickens, if confronted with this spectacle, would exclaim, “Bah, humbug” in his best Scrooge, and storm off into the night. After all, despite the vast sums made from the conversion of Scrooge, Dickens only ever saw profits of £744.
Of course he was the first to try and cash in, writing a Christmas piece in every subsequent year and featuring Scrooge at many of his profitable public readings.
He may have been the first, but he won’t be the last. God bless us, everyone.