Cardinal Albino Luciani: "Today the whole world is a poor house that has such great need of God!”

The Man Who Saved Christmas

By James Day

In The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, author Les Standiford points out that in the publication year of A Christmas Carol, 1843—written when Dickens was only 31—“there were no Christmas cards, no Christmas trees at royal residences or White Houses, no Christmas turkeys, no department-store Santa or his million clones, no outpouring of ‘Yuletide greetings,’ no weeklong cessation of business affairs through the New Year, no orgy of gift-giving, no ubiquitous public display of nativity scenes (or court fights regarding them), no holiday lighting extravaganzas, and no plethora of midnight services celebrating the birth of a savior.”

Charles Dickens is, to quote G.K. Chesterton, the man who “saved Christmas.” But is he to blame for the detour contemporary culture has taken towards obsession for sales and marketing of the season so much so consumers glaze right over genuine attempts to celebrate? Actually, the purity of why we celebrate the wonder of the season lies at the core of all of Dickens, not just A Christmas Carol. Or, as Chesterton puts it: “The mystery of Christmas is in a manner identical with the mystery of Dickens. If ever we adequately explain the one we may adequately explain the other.”

There is a moment in the 1935 film version of the Dickens classic A Tale of Two Cities in which Sydney Carton, the sad-faced would-be martyr masterfully portrayed by Ronald Colman, stands unmoving and unseen under a lamppost as carolers pass him singing “Adeste Fidelis.” Carton, while a bit intoxicated, had just attended Christmas Eve Mass with his unrequited love Lucie Manette and her family. Juxtaposing the refreshing beauty and optimism of Lucie is Carton’s own condemnation of himself as one beyond redemption, lingering outside in the snowfall on what should be the joyous commemoration of the birth of the Christ. In the whimsical look on Sydney Carton’s face, however, maybe, just maybe, there may be some hope in even the most cynical of men.

Such is the mission of the works of Charles Dickens.

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