tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/a-christmas-carol-14108/articlesA Christmas Carol – The Conversation2023-12-21T10:30:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2201752023-12-21T10:30:16Z2023-12-21T10:30:16ZHow Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol anticipated the psychology of Freud in its tale of childhood trauma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566613/original/file-20231219-29-hn8nob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arthur Rackham </span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With a joyful celebration of family love and communal bonds at its heart, Charles Dickens’s story A Christmas Carol has often <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-charles-dickens-redeemed-the-spirit-of-christmas-52335">been credited with creating our modern idea of Christmas</a>. Published on December 19 1843, the <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/dec1999.html#:%7E:text=Originally%20published%20on%2017%20December,by%20the%206th%20of%20January.">first edition sold out</a> rapidly and the story was <a href="https://www.dickenslondontours.co.uk/christmas-carol-on-stage.htm">immediately adapted onto the Victorian stage</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/list/ls577200923/?sort=list_order,asc&st_dt=&mode=detail&page=2">The Internet Movie Database</a> now lists 213 versions of the story, with the <a href="https://victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/xmas/cinema.html">first film made in 1901</a>, the same year Queen Victoria died. Less well-known than the story itself though is Dickens’s importance to our understanding of trauma. </p>
<p>In simple terms, trauma is a “wounding” event or situation that produces ongoing psychological symptoms, such as nightmares, flashbacks and distress. We take the idea of trauma for granted now. </p>
<p>It is an ever-present way of understanding and describing ourselves and the complex societies we live in. But at the same time, awareness of the impact of traumatic events such as war, displacement and adversity feels like an urgent necessity in our troubled world.</p>
<p>The psychological category of trauma is relatively new. The word was not used in English to describe a damaging psychological event until <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/trauma_n?tl=true">1894</a>. But the idea did not appear from nowhere. </p>
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<p>As literary scholar Jill Matus <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Shock_Memory_and_the_Unconscious_in_Vict.html?id=6n0hAwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">has shown</a>, the “newly forming discipline” of psychology theorised the concept of “shock” in the mid-Victorian period, exploring how the mind could be wounded and the body disorientated. Victorian doctors including <a href="https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/english/documents/media/aqa_c19th_text_train_travel.pdf?time=1553589898708">Benjamin Ward Richardson</a> identified <a href="https://diseasesofmodernlife.web.ox.ac.uk/home">new forms of “disease” arising from the fast pace of modern life</a>, such as stress and fatigue. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, as I research in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Parents_and_Children_in_the_Mid_Victoria.html?id=DmMGEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">my own work</a>, mid-Victorian writers traced and retraced how past events could impact the present. By focusing on painful childhood experiences, writers like Dickens and Charlotte Brontë (in the likes of Jane Eyre) helped shape the version of trauma we understand now. </p>
<p>The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud argued that trauma could not be understood as a single event; it is defined by an unconscious “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beyond_the_Pleasure_Principle.html?id=H_JyxgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">compulsion to repeat</a>”, the trauma replayed in new scenes. </p>
<p>For Dickens, it is not just that bad stuff happens – it recurs, it haunts and this implicates who you are and who you can be. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens anticipates Freud’s work and psychoanalysis, which are equally concerned with the reverberating echoes of childhood.</p>
<h2>Scrooge, neglect and forgetfulness</h2>
<p>Scrooge is now a byword for meanness. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens crafts an allegory of trauma and recovery through Ebeneezer Scrooge’s moral redemption. In the first chapter, we witness him bullying Bob Cratchit, his long-suffering clerk, and reject his almost painfully cheerful nephew, Fred. We soon learn that Scrooge’s only friend was Jacob Marley, his business partner, now long since dead.</p>
<p>For Scrooge, all forms of human feeling are “humbug”. The remedies for collective suffering are the workhouse and the prison. The poor are better off dead. Our familiarity with Scrooge perhaps dulls the shock we should feel at these beliefs. Dickens is clear that Scrooge has broken ties with himself, other people and society – and the situation is not just unpleasant, it is dangerous.</p>
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<p>Entwined in chains and cash boxes, Marley’s spirit visits Scrooge, warning that he too will be condemned to “wander through the earth” in an “incessant torture of remorse” if he doesn’t change his ways. Marley prepares Scrooge for the imminent arrival of three spirits: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come who offer him this chance of redemption.</p>
<p>The first of the three spirits takes Scrooge back to a Christmas scene from his childhood. There, he witnesses himself as a boy, alone in a cold, “melancholy” schoolroom which is “earthy” like a tomb. </p>
<p>We realise that Scrooge is not just a nasty old man, he is also a neglected child. He has unknowingly recreated his childhood loneliness in later life, confined to his miserable counting house. He sought comfort from money. With devastating consequences.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/going-for-a-walk-wasnt-really-a-thing-300-years-ago-the-victorians-turned-it-into-a-popular-pastime-219450">Going for a walk wasn’t really a thing 300 years ago – the Victorians turned it into a popular pastime</a>
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<h2>Mourning and recovery</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, the young Scrooge cheers his solitary Christmas by reading The Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Charles_Dickens/EeiVDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">books loved by Dickens as a child</a>. The characters spring from the pages. Imagination protects the boy and restores the adult, who is learning to remember. Scrooge must watch, listen to and feel every detail of this scene, which has a “softening influence”, giving “freer passage to his tears”.</p>
<p>Observing his younger self, Scrooge begins to accept the past and mourn his losses. Writing 50 years before Freud and Josef Breuer published their “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Studies_on_hysteria.html?id=NgWMUNvKxWIC&redir_esc=y">preliminary communication</a>” in psychoanalysis, in this eerie ghost story, Dickens presents a therapeutic scene.</p>
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<p>But this is bigger than Scrooge. When he later meets the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge must also acknowledge and grieve for the Victorian realities of poverty, adversity and cruelty – represented by the two allegorical children, Want and Ignorance.</p>
<p>As philosopher Judith Butler argued in her book <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Precarious_Life/pDf_DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Precarious+life+judith+butler&printsec=frontcover">Precarious Life</a>, mourning can be an act of solidarity. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens shows us that it is also an ethical process. A fitting message perhaps for the 21st century, and for the harsh Christmas many have ahead of them during this cost of living crisis.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeleine Wood received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for her PhD, Victorian Familial Enigmas: Inheritance and Influence, where she first developed her work on Dickens and trauma. </span></em></p>Scrooge was a neglected child whose trauma haunted him into old age.Madeleine Wood, Lecturer in Childhood Studies, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2183262023-12-08T17:30:32Z2023-12-08T17:30:32ZHow the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564310/original/file-20231207-21-4fg7ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6048%2C4019&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Christmas pudding, a legacy of the British Empire, is enjoyed around the world -- including in former British colonies.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/christmas-pudding-royalty-free-image/155147293?phrase=christmas+pudding&adppopup=true">esp_imaging/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an American living in Britain in the 1990s, my first exposure to Christmas pudding was something of a shock. I had expected figs or plums, as in the “<a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/we-wish-you-a-merry-christmas-lyrics-history-carol/">We Wish You a Merry Christmas” carol</a>, but there were none. Neither did it resemble the cold custard-style dessert that Americans typically call pudding.</p>
<p>Instead, I was greeted with a boiled mass of suet – a raw, hard animal fat this is often replaced with a vegetarian alternative – as well as flour and dried fruits that is often soaked in alcohol and set alight. </p>
<p>It’s in no danger of breaking into my top ten favorite Christmas foods. But as a <a href="https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/history/profile/troy-bickham/">historian of Great Britain and its empire</a>, I can appreciate the Christmas pudding for its rich global history. After all, it is a legacy of the British Empire with ingredients from around the globe it once dominated and continues to be enjoyed in places it once ruled.</p>
<h2>Christmas pudding takes its shape</h2>
<p>Christmas pudding is a relatively recent concoction of two older, at least medieval, dishes. The first was a runny porridge known as “plum pottage” in which any mixture of meats, dried fruits and spices might appear – edibles that could be preserved until the winter celebration.</p>
<p>Until the 18th century, “<a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/englishmans-plum-pudding">plum” was synonymous with raisins, currants and other dried fruits</a>. “Figgy pudding,” immortalized in the “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” carol, appeared in the written record by the 14th century. A mixture of sweet and savory ingredients, and not necessarily containing figs, it was bagged with flour and suet and cooked by steaming. The result was a firmer, rounded hot mass.</p>
<p>During the 18th century, the two crossed to become the more familiar plum pudding – a steamed pudding packed with the ingredients of the rapidly growing British Empire of rule and trade. The key was less a new form of cookery than the availability of once-luxury ingredients, including French brandy, raisins from the Mediterranean, and citrus from the Caribbean. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/kes297">Few things had become more affordable than cane sugar</a> which, owing to the labors of millions of enslaved Africans, could be found in the poorest and remotest of British households by mid-century. Cheap sugar, combined with wider availability of other sweet ingredients like citrus and dried fruits, made plum pudding an iconically British celebratory treat, albeit not yet exclusively associated with Christmas. </p>
<p>Such was its popularity that English satirist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Gillray">James Gillray</a> made it the centerpiece of one of his famous cartoons, depicting Napoleon Bonaparte and the British prime minister carving the world in pudding form. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in military uniforms with large hats cutting a large, round, brown pudding, placed on a table between them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564495/original/file-20231208-21-s0fyat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A satirical cartoon by James Gillray, showing British Prime Minister William Pitt and the French leader Napoleon Bonaparte carving up the world between them. Called ‘The Plumb Pudding in Danger,’ it was published on Feb. 26, 1805.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/satrirical-cartoon-by-james-gillray-showing-british-prime-news-photo/2667909?adppopup=true">Rischgitz/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Linked with Christmas</h2>
<p>In line with other modern Christmas celebrations, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-than-christmas-195636">Victorians took the plum pudding and redefined it for the holiday season</a>, making it the “Christmas pudding.”</p>
<p>In his 1843 internationally celebrated “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm">A Christmas Carol</a>,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-charles-dickens-redeemed-the-spirit-of-christmas-52335">Charles Dickens</a> venerated the dish as the idealized center of any family’s Christmas feast: “Mrs Cratchit entered – flushed, but smiling proudly – with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.” </p>
<p>Three years later, <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/history-of-the-christmas-pudding/#:%7E:text=The%20pudding%20we%20know%20today,or%20at%20least%20meat%20stock.">Queen Victoria’s chef published her favored recipe</a>, making Christmas pudding, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-than-christmas-195636">like the Christmas tree</a>, the aspiration of families across Britain. </p>
<p>Christmas pudding owed much of its lasting appeal to its socioeconomic accessibility. <a href="https://nottinghamindustrialmuseum.org.uk/christmas_pudding/">Victoria’s recipe, which became a classic</a>, included candied citrus peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemons, cloves, brandy and a small mountain of raisins and currants – all affordable treats for the middle class. Those with less means could either opt for lesser amounts or substitutions, such as brandy for ale. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/eliza-acton-cookery-writing-pioneer">Eliza Acton</a>, a leading cookbook author of the day who helped to rebrand plum pudding as Christmas pudding, offered a particularly <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/history-of-the-christmas-pudding/#:%7E:text=The%20pudding%20we%20know%20today,or%20at%20least%20meat%20stock.">frugal recipe</a> that relied on potatoes and carrots. </p>
<p>White colonists’ desires to replicate British culture meant that versions of Christmas pudding soon appeared across the empire. Even European <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-christmas-pudding-evolved-with-australia-35027">diggers in Austrialia’s goldfields</a> included it in their celebrations by mid-century.</p>
<p>The high alcohol content gave the puddings a shelf life of a year or more, allowing them to be sent even to the empire’s frontiers during Victoria’s reign, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-christmas-pudding-and-why-it-can-actually-be-quite-good-for-you-151160">including to British soldiers serving in Afghanistan</a>. Christmas celebrations for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/dec/24/christmas-crimean-war-1855-archive">British soldiers fighting in the Crimea</a> in 1855 included the Christmas pudding – a welcome respite from the cold winter.</p>
<h2>Empire pudding</h2>
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<span class="caption">The royal recipe for the Christmas pudding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/29445648651/in/album-72157669921465116/">BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives via Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>In the 1920s, the British Women’s Patriotic League heavily promoted it – calling it “Empire Pudding” in a <a href="http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-family-and-empire-christmas-pudding.html">global marketing campaign</a>. They praised it as emblem of the empire that should be made from the ingredients of Britain’s colonies and possessions: dried fruits from Australia and South Africa, cinnamon from Ceylon, spices from India and Jamaican rum in place of French brandy. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cntraveller.in/story/christmas-pudding-how-india-grew-to-love-a-symbol-of-the-british-empire/">Press coverage of London’s 1926 Empire Day celebrations</a> featured the empire’s representatives pouring the ingredients into a ceremonial mixing bowl and collectively stirring it. </p>
<p>The following year, the Empire Marketing Board received <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/deconstructing-christmas-pudding-secrets-seasonal-staple">King George V’s permission to promote the royal recipe</a>, which had all the appropriate <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022809002988">empire-sourced ingredients</a>.</p>
<p>Such promotional recipes and the mass production of puddings from iconic grocery stores <a href="https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/sainsburys-history-christmas-pudding">like Sainsbury’s</a> in the 1920s combined to place Christmas puddings on the tables of a myriad of peoples who resided across an empire on which the sun never set. </p>
<h2>After the empire</h2>
<p>Decolonization did not diminish the appeal of the Christmas pudding. Passengers transiting through London’s airports can find them in abundance this time of year. Their shape and density have <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/42377.stm">baffled airport security scanners</a> for some time, leading to requests to carry them as hand luggage. </p>
<p>In former white settler colonies, like Canada, the tradition endured, although in Australia, where Christmas falls in summer, trifle and pavlova are at least equally common. In parts of India, where it is sometimes known as “<a href="https://www.ruchikrandhap.com/pudim-east-indian-christmas-pudding-for/">pudim</a>,” it remains a traditional favorite, “steeped in tradition,” according to the leading English national daily newspaper, the “<a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/festivals/christmas-pudding-a-dessert-steeped-in-tradition-and-emotions-101672144359741.html">Hindustan Times</a>.” </p>
<p>Reflecting modern palates and trends, <a href="https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/christmas-pudding/">Jamie Oliver</a>, the celebrated British chef and author, has gluten-free and more modern options this year. His “classic” recipe, however, would not have been out of place on Queen Victoria’s table. </p>
<p>Like so many adaptations around the former empire, it includes some American ingredients: pecans and cranberries as well as bourbon substituted for brandy – an Anglo-American concoction – much like my own family. And I will embrace this one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Troy Bickham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Christmas pudding, once known as the ‘Empire Pudding,’ reflects the lasting legacy of the British Empire.Troy Bickham, Professor of History, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1511602020-12-23T18:55:50Z2020-12-23T18:55:50ZA brief history of Christmas Pudding – and why it can actually be quite good for you<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374222/original/file-20201210-23-3479zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C32%2C4255%2C2811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/plum-pudding-mandarins-berries-on-blue-521288893">Olesia Reshetnikova/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even in these hard and strange times, Christmas will be celebrated and traditions upheld. And for many British households, Christmas dinner would not be complete without a Christmas pudding – traditionally served with brandy sauce, brandy butter or custard. </p>
<p>The Christmas pudding originated in the <a href="http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/frumenty.html">14th-century</a> as a sort of porridge, originally known as “<a href="http://cookit.e2bn.org/historycookbook/1116-frumenty.html">frumenty</a>”, which bears little resemblance to the dessert we know today. </p>
<p>It was <a href="https://historydollop.com/2020/03/15/frumenty-a-medieval-wheat-porridge/">originally made</a> with hulled wheat, boiled in milk, seasoned with cinnamon and coloured with saffron. It was associated with meatless days, lent and advent and was often served as a plain dish. But there are a <a href="https://www.epersianfood.com/frumenty/">variety of recipes</a> which included <a href="https://www.mumwhatelse.com/christmas-pudding-traditional-recipe/s">additions</a> such as beef, mutton, raisins, currants, prunes, wines and spices. </p>
<p>In some instances, this was the staple food for Christmas eve, although in Yorkshire it was eaten first thing <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19098/19098-h/19098-h.htm">on Christmas morning</a>. In the 17th-century changes to the recipe were made. It was thickened with eggs, breadcrumbs, dried fruit and beer or spirits were added – and came to resemble something a bit more like a sweet pudding. However, it was the Victorians who fine tuned the recipe into the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2005/12/07/christmas_pudding_recipe_feature.shtml#:%7E:text=Brandy%20Sauce&text=This%20stew%20was%20served%20as,to%20give%20the%20pudding%20richness">Christmas pudding</a> many of us enjoy today. </p>
<p>A Christmas pudding should have 13 ingredients – that represent Jesus and the 12 disciples. Traditionally, these ingredients include: raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, breadcrumbs, citron, lemon peel, orange peel, flour, mixed spices, eggs, milk and brandy. Brandy is also <a href="https://www.pudforallseasons.com.au/blog/christmas-pudding-history-and-traditions">traditionally</a> poured over the pudding and set alight. The flaming brandy is said to represent the passion of Christ.</p>
<p>Christmas puddings were traditionally boiled in a “pudding cloth”, although today are usually steamed in a bowl. Presented on the table with a sprig of holly, they are then doused in brandy and set alight.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Old handwritten recipe for Christmas pudding" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374224/original/file-20201210-17-1poakc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A traditional Christmas recipe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-handwritten-recipe-christmas-pudding-538389616">Bruce Amos?Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The last Sunday before Advent became known as “<a href="https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/christmas/christmas-countdown/a550045/ultimate-stir-up-sunday-when/">stir up Sunday</a>”. This was when the ingredients of the pudding would be assembled and stirred up in a bowl with a wooden spoon (representing the manger) from east to west – symbolising the journey taken by the three wise men. Traditionally, every family member stirs the pudding three times and makes a secret wish.</p>
<p>Trinkets were always included in the traditional pudding. As a child I still remember the excitement of waiting to see who was going to <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2016/12/16/why-do-people-put-money-in-christmas-puddings-6327772/">find the sixpence</a>. Whoever found the coin was believed to have good fortune over the coming year. </p>
<h2>A healthy pud?</h2>
<p>Although the Christmas holidays can sometimes feel a little unhealthy – with a lot of sitting around and excessive food consumption – the ingredients that makeup a Christmas pudding are actually <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/365596/Why-Christmas-pudding-is-good-for-you">pretty nutritious</a>.</p>
<p>Traditional Christmas puddings consists of fibre rich ingredients, such as fruits, nuts and currants. Dried fruits are rich in fibre, enzymes, polyphenols (substances with a <a href="https://www.ijmrhs.com/medical-research/dry-fruits-and-diabetes-mellitus.pdf">high antioxidant activity</a>), vitamins and minerals. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/christmaspudding_71054">Sultanas, currants, apricots</a> and <a href="https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/food/recipes/a557006/pear-and-ginger-pudding">pears</a> are highly nutritious and packed with <a href="https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-rich-in-potassium">essential potassium and iron</a>. And although dried fruits can contain a lot of sugar, they have a lower glycemic index value so don’t impact your blood sugar in the same way as other sweet treats. </p>
<p>Raisins are also rich in antimicrobial compounds, fibre and iron. These compounds lower the risk of heart disease and can relieve constipation. Prunes too can also aid with digestion, relieve constipation, reduce inflammation and protect cells from free radical damage.</p>
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<img alt="Christmas pudding ingredients on an old wooden table" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374229/original/file-20201210-20-15gjuqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">All things nice and spice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/christmas-pudding-ingredients-on-old-wooden-1200871777">Schnapps2012/Shuttersock</a></span>
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<p>Walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans and almonds can also be added into the mix and these all come with a range of <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-walnuts">health benefits</a> – from <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/nuts-may-lower-cholesterol/">lowering cholesterol levels</a> and reducing heart disease risk to delivering high levels of vitamin E, polyphenols and melatonin.</p>
<p>The mixed spices, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, pimentos (or all spice) in a Christmas pudding are also an incredible source of <a href="https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/health-benefits-of-38-important-spices-from-around-the-world-1811783">aromatic antioxidants</a>. Spices aid digestion and have anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. They can supposedly even help to reduce bloating, cramps and nausea – key if you’ve been overdoing it a bit.</p>
<p>There is one secret ingredient often overlooked but included in many recipes – <a href="https://www.lovefood.com/recipes/56899/christmas-pudding-recipe">the carrot</a>. Rich in beta-carotene, which the body utilises to produce Vitamin A, carrots are good for lowering cholesterol levels and, yes, for the health of your eyes.</p>
<h2>A global tradition</h2>
<p>Although a British tradition, the Christmas pudding is eaten in various countries including <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-christmas-pudding-evolved-with-australia-35027#:%7E:text=The%20Christmas%20pudding%20was%20there,usual%20rations%20at%20Christmas%20time">Australia</a> and <a href="https://www.foodandhome.co.za/recipes/karoo-steamed-christmas-pudding">South Africa</a>. The Canadians also have a version which includes <a href="https://cannedpeachesproject.com/canadian-christmas-pudding-recipe/">potatoes alongside the carrots</a>. </p>
<p>The Christmas pudding even makes its way into literature, with Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol making <a href="https://www.inliterature.net/food-in-literature/baked-goods/cakes/2012/12/a-christmas-carol-steamed-christmas-pudding.html">reference to it</a>. Then there is the case for Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot to solve in which he is advised to avoid the <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/stories/the-adventure-of-the-christmas-pudding">plum pudding</a> – another name for the Christmas pud. </p>
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<p>One well known fact about the Christmas pudding is that there always seems to be some left over after Christmas day. In fact Christmas puddings of the past could last up to a year, so it was often shared out. Indeed, in 1885 a British newspaper reported the joyful consumption of a <a href="http://www.chinovalleyaz.net/DocumentCenter/View/5620/December-2019-Senior-Sentinel">plum pudding</a> – sent overland via special envoy from Tehran — to a group of British soldiers stationed in northwestern Afghanistan. </p>
<p>If you don’t fancy posting a pudding there are a number of ways you can share and use the <a href="https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/10-ways-leftover-christmas-desserts">leftovers</a> – with a whole host of recipes from Christmas strudel to a black pudding breakfast replacement. Another firm favourite is Christmas pudding ice-cream - simply mix pudding with vanilla ice cream and enjoy!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Flight does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Christmas holidays can sometimes feel a little unhealthy but the ingredients that makeup a Christmas pudding are pretty nutritious.Hazel Flight, Programme Lead Nutrition and Health, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1290852019-12-24T12:01:11Z2019-12-24T12:01:11ZChristmas movies: that time of year when home is where the heart is<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307715/original/file-20191218-11951-apo5z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C1017%2C542&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Macaulay Culkin in a still from Home Alone (1990).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fox Movies</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Christmas movies are so often linked to classic themes of redemption and rediscovery of innocence. Old favourites such as Home Alone, Love Actually, The Wizard of Oz, It’s A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, The Holiday and Elf reappear on our screens in a festive ritual as predictable as the turkey dinner itself. So what is it about these films that endures, and why do we feel drawn to watch again and again?</p>
<p>Within all of these films, the home – or the return home – emerges as an important ingredient in the festive formula. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/production-design-for-screen-9781472580672">My research has suggested</a> that the private environment of the home is often a key to character, where ideas can be distilled and accentuated. Personal space can mirror a character’s psychology, the interior décor reflecting interior landscape and layers of back story.</p>
<p>Character and story are closely entwined in the domestic setting, which often undergoes transformation to signify changes taking place in the narrative arc. Myths have been cultivated around the house as a safe secure structure embodying family values.</p>
<p>Screen homes can often appear as familiar as our own, especially those we return to regularly in the annual recycling of Christmas classics. In these recognisable places, we are reassured by the sense of stability and the knowledge of what happens next – comforted by characters we know and love behaving exactly as we expect them to.</p>
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<p>The homes featured in these films often perpetuate popular myths and include a warm welcome from a surrogate family that we may well prefer to our own. A reliable set of characters for us to cosy up to for a couple of hours. A sense of belonging comes with the knowledge of narrative, characters and place. We feel at home.</p>
<p>Whether it is the nurturing warmth of the Browns’ home in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-chilling-sweetness-of-paddington-2">Paddington 2</a>, the chaotic but ultimately resilient Byers’ bungalow in <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2476242/is-stranger-things-planning-a-christmas-special">Stranger Things</a> or the desirable cosy country cottage in <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/film/fj5gq8/the-holiday/">The Holiday</a>, people and places have been created that we recognise and wish to return to.</p>
<h2>The home as sanctuary</h2>
<p>Christmas classics often raise the stakes and heighten the importance of home further. For example in Home Alone, the home becomes a protective weapon to ward off the would be burglars. Miracle on 34th Street uses a traditional home with a white picket fence to prove that Santa Claus is real. And in The Holiday, a house swap between Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet’s characters enables both women to fulfil their potential.</p>
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<p>Christmas movies are often preoccupied with both the physical and metaphysical return home. In narrative terms, this closes the loop and gives a sense of completion. The quest for home is satisfying at any time of year – but it is particularly poignant at Christmas when we remember childhood Christmases and there is a pull to return to our families. </p>
<p>We return home for Christmas through these films – even if we do not physically travel back to our own homes and families. Watching a familiar film can transport back home at Christmas, whoever we are and wherever we are from. The transportation device also operates across time – as in the many film adaptations of <a href="http://britishperioddramas.com/news/a-christmas-carol-bbc-trailer-2019-guy-pearce-andy-serkis/">A Christmas Carol</a> we are granted the gift of revisiting our Christmases past, present and future where we can reconnect with our childhood and humanity. A range of unique memories can be triggered, allowing us to connect the dots all the way back through a trail of celluloid.</p>
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<h2>Home as redemption</h2>
<p>The redemptive possibilities of new beginnings and rebirth resonate with the themes of Christmas itself chiming with hope for the year ahead. Miracles are often entwined in Christmas films, such as Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life.</p>
<p>George Bailey (James Stewart) is on the verge of killing himself after having a really bad day, when he meets Clarence a trainee angel. Clarence subsequently earns his wings by helping George see the positive impact his life has had. At the heart of this story is the Bailey family home, which plays a pivotal role throughout the movie. Beginning as a derelict shell it gradually transforms to reflect the growing family. “The drafty old house”, as George calls it, has become something to escape from. But by the end of the film George gratefully returns home to his family and friends in a wonderfully life affirming Christmas scene.</p>
<p>Christmas movies tap into a nostalgic wish to return to Christmas past and create an imagined community that audiences feel a sense of belonging to and a metaphorical return home. This is welcome at any time of year – but Christmas has special resonance, as this is when we traditionally return home to our families in an annual ritual and the films we consume when we get there are entwined in this festive tradition.</p>
<p>We are drawn to these films because they contain enduring truths that continue to resonate with our own lives. So instead of complaining that there’s nothing decent on TV this Christmas, sit back and allow yourself to be transported in time and place. It’s a kind of magic in itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Barnwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For so many people, Christmas movies are a link with a happy and safe childhood home.Jane Barnwell, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Media Practice, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279002019-12-19T17:43:02Z2019-12-19T17:43:02ZIn an age of inequality, BBC’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ capitalizes on the money theme<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307142/original/file-20191216-123992-1fgcru7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C105%2C5428%2C3527&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Guy Pearce stars as Scrooge, the merciless creditor. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(BBC)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new three-episode adaptation of Charles Dickens’s <em><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000csdm">A Christmas Carol</a></em> airs this holiday season on FX and BBC One. Written by Steven Knight, and directed by Nick Murphy, this latest outing brings together a stellar cast led by Guy Pearce (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/oct/20/1"><em>Memento</em></a>), Andy Serkis (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/06/black-panther-review-marvel-wakanda-chadwick-boseman"><em>Black Panther</em></a>), Tom Hardy (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/11/mad-max-fury-road-review-tom-hardy"><em>Mad Max: Fury Road</em></a>) and Joe Alwyn (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/30/the-favourite-review-olivia-colman-yorgos-lanthimos"><em>The Favourite</em></a>).</p>
<p>In Dickens’ 1843 novella, Ebenezer Scrooge (Pearce in this version) evolves from unloved miser to “<a href="https://archive.org/details/christmascarolin20dick/page/164">as good a friend</a>, as good a master and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town or borough, in the good old world.” He is guided by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley (Stephen Graham) and the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come.</p>
<p>Dickens dramatizes conflicts, central to Victorian thought, between the individual and his or her community, between good for the few and good for the many. He has much to teach us about how to navigate the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/upshot/wealth-poverty-divide-american-cities.html">severe inequalities</a> in our own time.</p>
<h2>Dickens and money</h2>
<p>Money, and the distribution of it, is central to the novella. Indeed, one of our first glimpses of Scrooge takes place in the counting house of his firm. Scrooge hoards the coal, denies it to himself and to his clerk Bob Cratchit (Alwyn), and thus pressures the latter into keeping warm as best he can by means of a white comforter and a candle. Later on, a young family’s exchange makes apparent what a merciless creditor he is.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for <em>A Christmas Carol</em>.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Knight and Murphy capitalize on the money theme, right from the series’ trailer. Wrapped in chains, Marley’s ghost reproaches Scrooge for accumulating wealth at the cost of vandalizing the world, and we witness the exploitation of individuals and communities alike. </p>
<h2>Death over prison</h2>
<p>In this two-minute preview, Scrooge is in conversation with two gentlemen who are collecting money for charity. He is unmoved by the gentlemen’s claim that some of the poor and destitute prefer death over prison. A reaction shot underscores Scrooge’s indifference as Pearce dryly remarks: “Then let them die.” </p>
<p>This scene is a variation of one that takes place in the novella’s early pages. After ascertaining that there are prisons and union workhouses, and that “<a href="https://archive.org/details/christmascarolin20dick/page/12">[t]he treadmill and the poor law are in full vigour</a>,” Scrooge replies: “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.” He helps to support the establishments he’s mentioned. They “cost enough,” and “those who are badly off must go there.”</p>
<p>Less snappy than Pearce’s Scrooge, Dickens’ Scrooge continues: “If they would rather die … they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307265/original/file-20191216-124016-1hult9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Stephen Graham stars as Jacob Marley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(BBC)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though one may dissent with Scrooge’s decision and his faith in the Victorian Poor Law (i.e. workhouses), his reasoning and arguments demand our attention. Scrooge worries that if, on the one hand, unconditional relief is a bounty on idleness, then on the other, private charity cannot provide poor relief to the right people in the right quantities. </p>
<h2>Scrooge’s crimes</h2>
<p>Dickens shows us how his character has missed the point. Dozens of pages later, the Ghost of Christmas Present uses Scrooge’s own language to admonish him when the ghost prophesizes Tiny Tim’s death: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://archive.org/details/christmascarolin20dick/page/96">If these shadows</a> remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race … will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ghost reprimands Scrooge not for his lack of charity but for his desire to determine and regulate who deserves to live: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before he leaves Scrooge, the ghost shows him two children, a boy and a girl, “<a href="https://archive.org/details/christmascarolin20dick/page/116">wretched, abject, frightful</a>, hideous, miserable,” and enlarges his earlier lesson: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing is erased. Deny it! … Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When Scrooge wonders if the children have “no refuge or resource,” the ghost answers him with his earlier terms: “Are there no prisons? … Are there no workhouses?”</p>
<h2>Opportunity to improve</h2>
<p>Institutions, Dickens implies, are inadequate to meet the challenges of his Victorian England. As the novelist George Gissing has argued, Dickens’ social reform project is structured around the individual:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://archive.org/details/charlesdickenscr00gissrich/page/209">Dickens’s</a> remedy for the evils left behind by the bad old times was, for the most part, private benevolence. He distrusted legislation; he had little faith in charitable associations; though such work as that of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/366975">the Ragged Schools</a> strongly interested him. His saviour of society was a man of heavy purse and large heart, who did the utmost possible good in his own particular sphere.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through Scrooge, Dickens exposes the possibility of self-evaluation and self-invention.</p>
<p>In recent work on <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/51572/">Gissing and his contemporary Walter Besant</a>, I have shown how Scrooge does not, as one would expect, stress what he has learned and ask for a chance to redeem himself after the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him his neglected grave.</p>
<p>Rather, Scrooge negates the life he imagined he would have led had it not been for the Spirits, and sees this intervention as an opportunity to improve:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://archive.org/details/christmascarolin20dick/page/150">Spirit</a>! … hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>A Christmas Carol</em> offers us, too, an opportunity to reflect and improve.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Ue has held the prestigious Frederick Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.</span></em></p>Modern viewers: Scrooge doesn’t discuss what he’s learned or ask for redemption. He swiftly negates the life he would have led, had it not been for the ghostly interventions.Tom Ue, Adjunct Professor, Department of English, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279722019-12-06T13:05:15Z2019-12-06T13:05:15ZWhat makes Christmas movies so popular<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305448/original/file-20191205-38997-1655lw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from the 1946 classic 'It's A Wonderful Life.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/It%27s_A_Wonderful_Life.jpg/2048px-It%27s_A_Wonderful_Life.jpg">National Telefilm Associates</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you are one of those people who will settle in this evening with a hot cup of apple cider to watch a holiday movie, you are not alone. Holiday movies have become firmly embedded in Americans’ winter celebrations. </p>
<p>The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/movies/christmas-movies-television.html">reports</a> a massive increase in new holiday movies this year. Disney, Netflix, Lifetime and Hallmark are now in direct <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year-netflix-and-disney-battle-hallmark-for-christmas-viewers-11574017200">competition</a> for viewers’ attention, with both new releases and reruns of the classics.</p>
<p>Holiday movies are so popular not simply because they are “escapes,” as my <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/religion-and-film/9780231176750">research</a> on the relation between religion and cinema argues. Rather, these films offer viewers a glimpse into the world as it is could be. </p>
<h2>Christmas movies as reflection</h2>
<p>This is particularly true with Christmas movies.</p>
<p>In his 2016 book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/christmas-as-religion-9780198754565?cc=us&lang=en&">Christmas as Religion</a>,” the religious studies scholar <a href="https://www.kent.ac.uk/european-culture-languages/people/1618/deacy-chris">Christopher Deacy</a> states that Christmas movies act as a “barometer of how we might want to live and how we might see and measure ourselves.” </p>
<p>These movies offer a variety of portraits of everyday life while affirming ethical values and social mores along the way. </p>
<p>The 1946 classic “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/">It’s a Wonderful Life</a>” – about a man who longs to travel but remains stuck in his childhood town – represents visions of a community in which every citizen is a vital component. </p>
<p>Another movie commonly replayed this time of year is 2005’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356680/">The Family Stone</a>” which portrays the clashes of a mostly average family but shows viewers that quarrels can be worked through and harmony is possible.</p>
<p>The 2003 British holiday film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314331/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Love Actually</a>,” which follows the lives of eight couples in London, brings to viewers the perennial theme of romance and the trials of relationships. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305276/original/file-20191204-70122-1lu7ba7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Holiday films create alternate realities that provide us solace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/editor/image/young-couple-home-their-pet-dog-525526351">DGLimages/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Movie watching as ritual practice</h2>
<p>As holiday movies bring viewers into a fictional world, people are able to work through their own fears and desires about self-worth and relationships. Such movies can provide solace, reaffirmation and sometimes even courage to continue working through difficult situations. The movies offer hope in believing it all might turn out alright in the end. </p>
<p>When people see some part of their own lives unfold on screen, the act of viewing operates in a fashion that’s strikingly similar to how a religious ritual works. </p>
<p>As anthropologist <a href="https://profiles.utdallas.edu/bobby.alexander">Bobby Alexander</a> explains, rituals are actions that transform people’s everyday lives. Rituals can open up “ordinary life to ultimate reality or some transcendent being or force,” he writes in the collection “<a href="https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=B1485C">Anthropology of Religion</a>.” </p>
<p>For example, for Jews and Christians, ritually observing the Sabbath day by sharing meals with family and not working connects them with the creation of the world. Prayer rituals in the Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions connect those praying with their God, as well as with their fellow believers. </p>
<p>Holiday movies do something similar, except that the “transcendent force” they make viewers feel is not about God or another supreme being. Instead, this force is more secular: It’s the power of family, true love, the meaning of home or the reconciliation of relationships. </p>
<h2>Movies create an idealized world</h2>
<p>Take the case of the 1942 musical “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034862/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Holiday Inn</a>.” It was one of the first movies – after the silent era’s various <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0001544/?ref_=kw_li_tt">versions</a> of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” – where the plot used Christmas as a backdrop, telling the story of a group of entertainers who have gathered at a country inn.</p>
<p>In reality, it was a deeply secular film about romantic interests, couched in a desire to sing and dance. When it was released, the United States had been fully involved in the World War II for a year and national spirits were not high.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305278/original/file-20191204-70105-yg1ooe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from the film, ‘White Christmas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/29069717@N02/39192674012">Classic Film/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The movie hasn’t endured as a classic. But Bing Crosby’s song “White Christmas,” which appeared in it, quickly became etched in the holiday consciousness of many Americans, and a 1954 film called “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047673/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">White Christmas</a>” became better known. </p>
<p>As historian <a href="https://experts.utexas.edu/penne_restad">Penne Restad</a> puts it in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/christmas-in-america-9780195109801?cc=us&lang=en&">her 1995 book</a> “Christmas in America,” Crosby’s crooning offers the “quintessential expression” of the holidays, a world which “has no dark side” – one in which “war is forgotten.” </p>
<p>In subsequent Christmas movies, the main plots have not been set in the context of war, yet there is nonetheless often a battle: that of overcoming a materialistic, gift-buying and gift-giving kind of holiday.</p>
<p>Movies like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116705/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Jingle all the Way</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790604/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Deck the Halls</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060345/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4">How the Grinch Stole Christmas</a>” center around the idea that the true meaning of Christmas is not in rampant consumerism but in goodwill and family love. </p>
<p>Dr. Seuss’s famously grouchy Grinch thinks he can ruin Christmas by taking all the gifts away. But as the people gather together, giftless, they join hands and sing while the narrator tells viewers, “Christmas came anyway.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gfGNqTuaZ6k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from the 1966 TV movie “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>“All’s right with the world”</h2>
<p>Though Christmas is a Christian holiday, most holiday films are not religious in the traditional sense. There is hardly ever a mention of Jesus or the biblical setting of his birth. </p>
<p>As media studies scholar John Mundy <a href="https://edinburgh.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748628087.001.0001/upso-9780748628087-chapter-11">writes</a> in a 2008 essay, “Christmas and the Movies,” “Hollywood movies continue to construct Christmas as an alternative reality.” </p>
<p>These movies create on-screen worlds that kindle positive emotions while offering a few laughs. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">A Christmas Story</a>,” from 1983, waxes nostalgic for childhood holidays when life seemed simpler and the desire for a Red Ryder air rifle was the most important thing in the world. The plot of 2003’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319343/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Elf</a>” centers on the quest to reunite with a lost father. </p>
<p>In the end, as the narrator says late in “A Christmas Story” – after the family has overcome a serious of risible mishaps, the presents have been unwrapped and they’ve gathered for Christmas goose – these are times when “all’s right with the world.” </p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Holiday movies offer us a glimpse into how the world is could be, often in sharp contrast to our lives as they are. In that way, the annual act of viewing them is like a religious ritual.S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, by special appointment, Hamilton CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1081162018-12-21T10:58:20Z2018-12-21T10:58:20ZCharles Dickens and the birth of the classic English Christmas dinner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250804/original/file-20181216-185258-1c74ayz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C1%2C905%2C561&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hand colored etching by John Leech</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Charles Dickens popularised the traditional, English Christmas in 1843 in his novel <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm">A Christmas Carol</a>, when Bob Cratchit and his family sit down on Christmas Day to eat a dinner of goose with mashed potatoes and apple sauce accompanied by sage and onion stuffing and followed by Christmas pudding. </p>
<p>It’s a vision that is watched – unseen by the Cratchits – by a fast-repenting Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present who is showing the miser the error of his ways. </p>
<p>Duly chastened by his supernatural experience, the newly festive Scrooge sends over, on Christmas morning, a turkey that is “twice the size of Tiny Tim” – and will certainly feed more people than the goose. This set the seal for the popular English Christmas meal. But what did people eat at Christmas time before goose and turkey?</p>
<h2>A time of gifts</h2>
<p>In the anonymous late 14th-century poem <a href="https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight-an-introduction">Gawain and the Green Knight</a>, Gawain is served “many delicacies” on Christmas Day in the castle of Sir Bertilak, but no meat in the meal he eats on Christmas Eve, which was a time for fasting.</p>
<p>During the medieval period it was traditional in wealthier households for a boar’s head to take pride of place at the centre of the festive table – a tradition alluded to when Sir Bertilak presents Gawain with the head and flesh of the boar he has killed. A 15th-century carol, The Boar’s Head, celebrates the dish this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Chief service in all this land<br>
Wheresoever it may be found,<br>
Served up with mustard.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course the poor would have eaten what they could get, including scraps from their master’s table if they had access to them.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r7adETaOYiQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Good bread and good drink</h2>
<p>For the Elizabethans, no specific food was special during Christmas time. In <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/fivehundredpoint08tussuoft/fivehundredpoint08tussuoft_djvu.txt">Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry</a> (1573), Thomas Tusser recommended: “Good bread and good drink”. Meat was the dominant foodstuff: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Beef, mutton, and pork, and good pies of the best<br>
Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well dressed. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Potatoes – a product of the New World, like the turkey – were not a regular feature of feasts until the middle of the 17th century. Even then they remained expensive – which is why bread and pies dominate in descriptions of Christmas foodstuffs before Dickens. Vegetables are rare in descriptions of early feasts, and do not feature in the Cratchit Christmas dinner. The Brussels sprout – a member of the cabbage family, specially developed by 16th-century Belgian farmers – may have become a staple of the modern Christmas dinner in part due to fashion and an increasing awareness of nutrition, and the fact that cabbage had a reputation since ancient times of <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A14295.0001.001/1:7.8.3?rgn=div3;view=fulltext">preventing drunkenness</a>.</p>
<p>Robert Herrick’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22421/22421-h/ii.html#p784">Ceremonies for Christmas</a> (1648) urges “merry, merry boys” to bring in the Christmas log and to consume strong beer and white bread “while the meat is a-shredding / For the rare mince-pie”. The yule log would have been lit on Christmas Eve; the modern confection of sponge and chocolate is a nod towards this old tradition. On the contrary, mince pies used to be savoury – in Hannah Woolley’s popular cookbook of the time, <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A66847.0001.001">The Queen-Like Closet</a> (1670), there is a recipe for “good minced pies” containing veal. Puddings too were often savoury, similar to haggis – although it is the sweet plum pudding that would become the traditional Christmas pud.</p>
<h2>Twelfth night</h2>
<p>Yet for the Elizabethans, and subsequent generations too, Twelfth Night (January 6) rather than Christmas Day was the main focus of revelry during the Christmas season. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (first performed around 1602) Sir Toby Belch evokes the historical figure of the Lord of Misrule. When Sir Toby mocks Malvolio’s puritanism with “Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” he anticipates the banning of such food during the English Commonwealth of 1649 to 1660.</p>
<p>Herrick’s poem <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22421/22421-h/ii.html#p1035">Twelfth Night</a>, or King and Queen (1648) describes the Twelfth Night Cake – a spiced fruit cake containing a bean and a pea that represents the king and queen with the recipients of each being crowned king and queen for the night. Herrick’s “bowl full of gentle lamb’s wool” (hot ale, roasted apple pulp, and spices) is used to <em>wassail</em> (toast) the pretend king and queen.</p>
<p>Samuel Pepys makes several references to Twelfth Night Cake <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1668/01/">in his diary</a>, including an entry for January 6 1668 where he describes “an excellent cake” that cost him nearly 20 shillings – about one day’s salary from his job as Clerk of the Acts at the Navy Board. </p>
<p>Twelfth Night remained the focus of festivities during the Regency period and Jane Austen would have been familiar with the eponymous cake. She also mentions Christmas in her novels but does not specify the Christmas Day meal. In Emma, there is a <a href="https://austenonly.com/2009/12/19/jane-austen-and-christmas-the-christmas-eve-supper-at-randalls/">Christmas Eve dinner at Randalls</a>, the home of the Westons, where saddle of mutton is served, and in Persuasion, a <a href="https://austenised.blogspot.com/2010/12/jane-austens-christmas.html">visit to the Musgroves</a> during the Christmas holidays reveals tables “bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies”. Brawn here indicates a dish of meat from the head of a pig set in its own jelly and so harks back to the boar’s head from medieval times.</p>
<p>The closest most of us get to Boar’s Head these days is likely to be a pub whose name commemorates it. So we can largely thank Charles Dickens, who was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/24/charles-dickens-loved-turkey-christmas-dinner-letters-reveal">himself very fond of turkey</a>, for the tradition of the Christmas Dinner turkey – a gift from the newly reformed Scrooge, which now forms the centrepiece of most Christmas tables.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Fitzpatrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If it hadn’t been for A Christmas Carol, the menu may well have centred on goose (or a boar’s head).Joan Fitzpatrick, Senior Lecturer in English (Specialism: Renaissance Scholar), Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/887992017-12-22T12:32:37Z2017-12-22T12:32:37ZCharles Dickens did not invent Christmas – but his seasonal ghosts are still relevant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200365/original/file-20171221-17712-12lfq45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>At this time of year, readers worldwide turn to Charles Dickens, and A Christmas Carol in particular. Such is Dickens’ association with the season that a new film has even credited him with being “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6225520/?ref_=ttmi_tt">The Man Who Invented Christmas</a>” with his famous tale. So did he? And what did Dickens really tell us in the pages of <a href="http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/dickens/ChristmasCarol/1">A Christmas Carol</a>?</p>
<p>One pervasive interpretation is that A Christmas Carol brings a strong message of anti-capitalism. As one person commented on Twitter shortly after the film’s release:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"937147422039355393"}"></div></p>
<p>The reading of the text as thoroughly anti-capitalist carries popular appeal, but misses the nuances of Dickens’ argument. Appearing in December 1843 (five years before Marx and Engels’ <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Communist-Manifesto">The Communist Manifesto</a>, Dickens’ social criticism moves in another direction. His answers to economic inequality are not revolutionary – they are based on the notion of sympathy. Social ills in the novel are apparently cured not by a retreat from commercialism, but a headlong plunge further into it. This is most clear in Scrooge’s purchase of the prize commodity of the turkey. For Dickens, Scrooge’s failing is not that he is rich, but that he does not spend enough of his money. Here, economic circulation is crucial. </p>
<p>In A Christmas Carol, class divisions and the workings of capitalism remain untouched. The message instead is that those with money should treat those without money with sympathy and a sense of responsibility. </p>
<p>Such paternalist politics run the risk of presenting Dickens as “conservative”, but he would have strenuously resisted such a label. And whether his model of trickle-down sympathy actually works or reinforces capitalism as a given, is open to question. But it is curious that A Christmas Carol is so often invoked as radical critique. </p>
<p>So where does this come from? As literary scholar Paul Davis argues in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Lives_and_Times_of_Ebenezer_Scrooge.html?id=aXkt53LmA-EC&redir_esc=y">The Lives and Times of Ebeneezer Scrooge</a>, interpretations of the text move through distinct historical stages. </p>
<p>The Victorians read it as a retelling of the Biblical Christmas story, focusing on Scrooge’s pilgrimage. The Edwardians recast A Christmas Carol as a children’s story. It was only in the 1930s, following the Wall Street Crash, that Dickens’ text was adopted as a critique of the dangers of capitalism, a historically situated interpretation that survives today.</p>
<p>Davis extends his analysis of the afterlives of the text to the 1950s and 1960s, with adaptations <a href="http://www.briandesmondhurst.org/scrooge.html">centred on Scrooge</a> himself, and his redemption as a kind of therapy. Moving into the 1980s, film versions presented more of a conflict between self-interest and altruism. </p>
<p>How, then, might we reinvent Dickens’ message in 2017, in the age of Donald Trump and neo-liberalism? </p>
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<p>We could start by adding a 21st-century element, “media Scrooge”, in which not only the message but the medium come under scrutiny. We can see hints of an early version of this in the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096061/">1988 film Scrooged</a>, which featured Bill Murray as a cynical television executive. </p>
<p>So it would not be surprising to see future adaptations that focus on A Christmas Carol’s implicit questioning of the reliability of perception and, by extension, the media. When the ghost of Christmas Past tells Scrooge: “These are but the shadows of things that have been…. They have no consciousness of us”, he pre-empts the literal shadows of cinema and television. </p>
<p>Likewise, in the novel, Scrooge’s first response to Marley’s ghost is to dismiss him as a food-induced hallucination. “There’s more of gravy than of grave about you!” he exclaims. His initial reaction is the now familiar Trumpian cry of “fake news”.</p>
<p>The novella continually raises the question of what can be believed. Scrooge asks: “Was it a dream or not?” The incidental detail of Scrooge having a head cold prepares readers for the possibility of hallucination. </p>
<p>These questions move from the topic of perception to media when the novel asks what kinds of figurative language can be trusted. When the narrator says that the turkey-buying boy is “off like a shot”, he then notes that: “He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got off a shot half as fast”, as if reconsidering the accuracy of the image.</p>
<p>Given the novel’s interest in the reliability of spectacular shadows, it is ironic that it has itself become implicated in its own historical version of fake news. As in the title of director Bharat Nalluri’s 2017 film, Dickens is often invoked as inventing modern Christmas. </p>
<h2>God bless us, everyone</h2>
<p>In fact, our Victorian ideal of Christmas often predates A Christmas Carol. We would, for instance, recognise many of the scenes in texts such as Robert Hervey’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/herveys-the-book-of-christmas">The Book of Christmas</a> from 1836. The most famous of Christmas poems, Clement Clarke Moore’s <a href="http://nyhistory.org/exhibit/visit-st-nicholas">A Visit from St Nicholas</a> (“‘Twas the night before Christmas…”) predates A Christmas Carol by two decades.</p>
<p>But while Dickens did not invent the modern Christmas all by himself, A Christmas Carol was crucial in consolidating the idea of the urban celebration. Before the industrial revolution, Christmas had been associated with the rural and the feudal, as it was in Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers. </p>
<p>By 1843, and the near-completion of the industrial revolution, there was concern over whether the countryside Christmas could survive the shift to the city. Dickens’ text, with its evocation of urban houses and celebrations, confirmed that it could.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Pittard has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>The Victorian idea of Christmas pre-dates Dickens. What the writer did was bring an essentially rural celebration into an urban setting.Christopher Pittard, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/889242017-12-21T19:06:05Z2017-12-21T19:06:05ZHumbug, tinsel and gravy: in search of the perfect Christmas pop song<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200086/original/file-20171220-4948-1faljgb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The search for the 'ideal' Christmas song crosses a very broad range of genres and artists</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CC/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year, musicologist Joe Bennett <a href="https://joebennett.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/musical-and-lyric-traits-in-the-uk_s-favourite-christmas-songs1.pdf">took a sample</a> of the top 200 Spotify streams from the Christmas week of 2016 and dissected those that were Christmas-related. </p>
<p>The results, analysed according to parameters such as beats per minute, key signature and lyrical content, were passed to professional songwriters with a pedigree of hits for major artists to produce an <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/christmas-music-musicology-holiday-songs-743236">“ultimate” Christmas song</a>. The result is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96jOezZhlRQ">rather effective</a>, even for unbelievers.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The ‘ultimate Christmas song’ – according to a group of musicologists who sampled Christmas-related Spotify streams.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Aptly enough, that project was commissioned by a <a href="https://www.intugroup.co.uk/en/news/news-and-press-releases/is-this-the-happiest-christmas-song-in-the-world/">chain of shopping centres</a>. But while it distinguishes between lyrical themes, it primarily illuminates the aesthetic dead-centre of the Christmas pop song. </p>
<h2>From commerce to campaigns – political Christmas songs</h2>
<p>The concept of the “Christmas song” is rife with political contradictions. It marks a day to put aside division and commerce, and yet is aimed squarely at that most blatantly commercial and competitive institution, the pop charts.</p>
<p>There’s a broad umbrella of musical and lyrical tropes that – pardon the pun – rings bells for listeners in constituting a “Christmas song”. The machine-tooled nature of the archetypal Christmas pop song is such a recognisable format, in fact, that it’s been opened up to a hybrid of data analysis and songwriting, as Bennett’s work illustrates.</p>
<p>Other researchers have sought to bring a broader typology to the service of unpicking the ideological resonance behind Christmas songs. </p>
<p>The musicologist Freya Jarman, for instance, uses a <a href="http://edinburgh.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748628087.001.0001/upso-9780748628087-chapter-8">framework</a> of overlapping concepts linked to Christmas, including the “traditional/religious” (such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjmGbI-Mnys">Mistletoe and Wine</a>), “nostalgia” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9QLn7gM-hY">White Christmas</a>), “romance” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gmARGvPlI">Last Christmas</a>) or “parties/friends” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r89CjMZDQpQ">I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day</a>).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Wham’s Last Christmas taps into the romantic Christmas spirit.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The last of Jarman’s categories though – “good will to all men” – most starkly highlights the complexities around commercial acumen and the political potential of Christmas music. </p>
<p>In the broader canon of “political” pop songs, many of the most well known are, in fact, Christmas songs rather than more overt “protest” songs – a political message smuggled in among the sleigh-bells. John Lennon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Vfp48laS8">Merry Christmas, War is Over</a> is one example, another being Jona Lewie’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HkJHApgKqw">Stop the Cavalry</a>, a universal soldier’s lament.</p>
<p>Other Christmas songs, notably <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w7jyVHocTk">Do They Know It’s Christmas</a>, have involved direct political lobbying, such as when Bob Geldof tried to get the government to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/07/13/music-tax-the-prime-minister-how-live-aid-changed-the-uk-and-the-world/#7624372dea7f">waive taxes</a> on the single itself. This arguably became a more powerful intervention than other more obviously “political” songs – forcing the government to take a <a href="https://theconversation.com/jo-cox-charity-single-theres-no-going-back-in-the-merging-of-pop-and-politics-70615">position</a> on the tax arrangements around charity singles.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Some Christmas songs such as Bob Geldoff’s Do They Know It’s Christmas are an act of direct political lobbying.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Such tensions around commerce and authenticity in popular music become especially marked around Christmas, with the charts a key battleground. </p>
<p>When Rage Against the Machine’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ">Killing in the Name Of</a> became Britain’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8423340.stm">Christmas Number 1</a> in 2009, it was the result of social media campaigning against the domination of X Factor releases as seasonal chart toppers. The song’s broad political message was deployed in the specific context of a longstanding debate within popular music consumption.</p>
<p>This method leaked from commentary on popular music’s internal politics into broader political discourse. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQLQ1Rc_Js">Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead</a> was pushed up the charts by social media after <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22145306">Margaret Thatcher died</a> in 2013 and, latterly, the similar success of a protest mash-up accusing UK Prime Minister Theresa May of being a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxN1STgQXW8">Liar Liar</a>” caused <a href="http://www.electionanalysis.uk/uk-election-analysis-2017/section-8-personality-politics-and-popular-culture/sound-bites-the-music-of-election-2017/">headaches for broadcasters</a> regarding election regulations.</p>
<h2>Striking a balance</h2>
<p>But while the underlying politics of commercialism and community have now extended into the techniques of political messaging the rest of the year round, there are still attempts to strike a balance. </p>
<p>There’s a raft of Christmas songs that circumvent, without fully avoiding, the Yuletide by taking a sideways (or critical) view of it. These allow ambivalent listeners to participate in the festivities while maintaining their sense of critical distance from the more traditional trappings.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Fairytale of New York is a story of love gone wrong with Christmas as the backdrop.</span></figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8">Fairytale of New York</a> is an obvious example here. Where the “traditional” Christmas song is about Christmas, it’s about a love story gone awry, with Christmas as the backdrop. This allows sceptics to buy into the aesthetic, and even the sentiment, while holding firm their anti-Christmas credentials. </p>
<p>Others look at the contradictions head-on. Tim Minchin’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q">White Wine in the Sun</a> uses the Australian December sunshine as a pivot to focus on family, taking a swipe at commerce – “selling Playstations and beer” – while embracing the sentimentality. Addressing the social context of Christmas is another means of tackling the broader, implicit, politics of class. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tim Minchin takes a swipe at the excessive commerce of Christmas in White Wine In The Sun.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>More universal ‘human’ Christmas messages</h2>
<p>Family, fraught relationships and exclusion can make for a more potent, perhaps realistic, Christmas story than snowflakes and Santa. </p>
<p>In The Kinks’ caustic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPPCPqDINEk">Father Christmas</a> the narrator, a department store Santa, is mugged by a group of youths demanding practical help. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Give us some money … Give my daddy a job ‘cause he needs on".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Paul Kelly’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh79619xxk8">How to Make Gravy</a>, an isolated and fractious address from a prison cell, packs its emotional punch through mundane details and implied backstory. The story here is both personal and, through that prism, national. </p>
<p>Eschewing the standard Christmas musical and lyrical devices entirely, How to Make Gravy is at the opposite end of the spectrum to the typical tinsel-draped fare, and buries its politics in the personal. Yet it’s still become a Christmas classic. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy is an emotional Christmas appeal from a prison cell.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The search for authenticity and political punch</h2>
<p>From outright celebration, through charity to explicit political salvos, there are many ways to musically address the pleasures and strains of the season. Aesthetic tropes – the musical bells and baubles – notwithstanding, the form is actually very broad and embraces a range of genres. </p>
<p>The “ideal” Christmas song in the sense of commercial pop is also open to subversion. Beyond this, there’s a strong draw among some sections of the public towards more cynical, or at least ambivalent, takes on the traditional Christmas customs - even if these often end up adhering to what are ultimately similar sentiments. </p>
<p>As in Dickens’ immortal story of Scrooge in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm">A Christmas Carol</a>, there’s room, it seems, for the humbug to carry the day without ruining it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>From outright celebration, through charity to explicit political salvos – is there such a thing as the ‘ultimate’ Christmas pop song?Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/889772017-12-14T13:57:54Z2017-12-14T13:57:54ZJohn Leech: the cartoonist who gave us Christmas past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199220/original/file-20171214-27555-jhd9il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Leech via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scrooge sits by the fire, warming his hands on its meagre heat. To his left is the ghost of Jacob Marley, the chains that encircle him a testament to his life of cold-hearted avarice. Between them is a candle – its cold, cruel light illuminating one of the best-known and most beloved stories of its (and our) time: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.</p>
<p>The artist who illustrated the scene was John Leech. A huge star in his time, Leech’s fame has receded like many of his Victorian contemporaries. But <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/man-invented-christmas-review-fanciful-festive-fluff-twitchy/">a new film</a> about the writing of Dickens’ masterpiece, which features Simon Callow as the cartoonist and book illustrator, has brought Leech back like a ghost of cartoons past.</p>
<p>Although Dickens is often credited with inventing the modern idea of Christmas, Leech should certainly take some of the credit (or blame). It was A Christmas Carol, and its vivid illustrations, which cemented in the public’s mind the idea that it was wrong to work on Christmas Day – something that lead to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13217242">Bank Holidays Act</a>. </p>
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<p>At the time, Dickens was still in his early 30s and was in a bit of an early-career slump. His previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, had not been the success to which Dickens had become accustomed. Dickens needed a hit. With this in mind, he knew the choice of illustrator would be a key factor in its popularity. It was little surprise that he turned to Leech.</p>
<p>Born in 1817, John Leech was already being called a genius <a href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/specialcollections/2017/06/05/the-schoolboy-sketches-of-john-leech/">at an early age</a>. It was with the new publication, <a href="https://www.punch.co.uk/about/index">Punch magazine</a>, that he found his spiritual home. Launched in 1841, the magazine quickly shook off pretensions to radicalism and found its niche in a more respectable form. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Frontispiece of A Christmas Carol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Leech</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leech became a significant figure in Victorian society and culture, in some ways embodying the recent shift in taste in caricatures and journalism in general. The previous generation of visual satirists, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-sewers-and-statesmen-james-gillray-king-of-cartoon">personified by James Gillray</a>, delighted in grotesque, scurrilous and often scatological illustrations, which even today can shock in the ferocity of their attacks on public figures. </p>
<p>Leech’s work, along with that of his fellow Punch artists, was gentler and designed not to offend the sensibilities of the magazine’s readers. That is not to say his work was toothless – far from it – but his targets were less likely to be individuals and more likely to be issues such as poverty. It was probably this element of his work that attracted Dickens.</p>
<p>As strange as it now may seem, Dickens’ publishers were less than enthusiastic. The novelist <a href="https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/what-the-insane-circumstances-under-which-dickens-wrote-a-christmas-carol-reveal-about-money-debt-and-success-20171214">was in debt</a> and they didn’t see A Christmas Carol <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-edition-of-a-christmas-carol#">as the way to turn this situation around</a>. But Dickens persevered and with John Leech crafted a tale that more than made up in impact what it lacked in length.</p>
<h2>Popular imagination</h2>
<p>Leech can lay claim to have drawn the <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/leech/leech.html">world’s first political cartoon</a>. In 1843 – the very same year that Dickens published his Christmas classic – an exhibition of frescos was being held at Westminster, something that Punch thought inappropriate when many who were living in the same district were starving. </p>
<p>The exhibition featured cartoons in the <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/daniel-maclise-what-is-a-cartoon">original sense of the word</a> – artists’ preliminary drawings – and was considered a worthy subject of attack by the magazine. Leech, then just 25, drew Substance and Shadow under the heading Cartoon No. 1. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leech’s Substance and Shadow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Punch magazine via The Victorian Web</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a striking image, juxtaposing the grand setting of Westminster Hall with the dishevelled poor looking forlornly on. There is a definite feel of Dickens’ abhorrence to social injustice about this, and much of Leech’s later work. Soon, after all, the illustrations in Punch were being called cartoons, and their artists cartoonists.</p>
<p>Leech went on to further success and immense popularity. His <a href="http://www.john-leech-archive.org.uk/1856/crimean-war-1.htm">work on the Crimean War</a> remains a classic of political cartooning – it not only reflected, but actually influenced the news agenda; his friend, the novelist William Makepiece Thackeray <a href="https://archive.org/stream/johnleechartisth00kittiala/johnleechartisth00kittiala_djvu.txt">going so far as to claim </a> that the “popularity of Punch is perhaps owning more to John Leech that to any other man”. He could count among his admirers the likes of the artist <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-john-everett-millais-bt-379">John Everett Millais</a> and the prime minister, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/gladstone_william_ewart.shtml">William Gladstone</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Steve Bell of his day: John Leech.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than 20 years after his death at just 47 in 1864, a collection of his work, <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/pictures-of-life-and-character-from-the-collection-of-mr-punch-1887/">Sketches of Life and Character</a>, sold 140,000 copies. Perhaps most significantly, it <a href="http://illustrationchronicles.com/How-Punch-Magazine-Changed-Everything">has been claimed</a> that it was Leech “who made the public look first at the pictures” – something that remains true today for cartoonists as diverse as The Guardian’s Steve Bell and the Daily Telegraph’s Matt.</p>
<p>While many other artists have illustrated editions of A Christmas Carol over the years, Leech’s work on the original has given him the right to claim that it was not just Dickens who was the man who invented Christmas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Whitworth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The artist who illustrated A Christmas Carol was one of the best-known satirists of his time.James Whitworth, PhD Researcher in Newspaper and Magazine Cartoons & Professional Cartoonist., University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/879362017-12-07T23:20:10Z2017-12-07T23:20:10ZCharles Dickens: The man who invented Christmas plagiarized Jesus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198193/original/file-20171207-11318-p5aocn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Christmas Carol can be seen as a mirror to biblical parables.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bleeker Street Media/Elevation Pictures)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Everyone knows the story of Scrooge, a man so miserly his name has become synonymous with penny-pinching meanness. Scrooge’s conversion from miser to benefactor has been told and retold since Charles Dickens first wrote <em>A Christmas Carol</em> in the fall and winter of 1843. Ebenezer is a wonderful character, so richly portrayed and fascinating he’s echoed in stories from <em>The Grinch</em> to <em>It’s a Wonderful Life</em>. </p>
<p>Pop culture has embraced both Dickens and his tale. With this season’s <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx3ctBjG6yI">The Man Who Invented Christmas</a>,</em> Hollywood has done it again.</p>
<p>But who was Scrooge before he was, well, Christopher Plummer? The inspiration for the crotchety Christmas-hater may have been those who put Dickens’ own father into debtor’s prison and were responsible for young Charles working in a shoe-blacking factory. </p>
<p>Some Dickens scholars believe the author’s 1843 visit to sooty Manchester, or to “the black streets of London,” (as he described them in a letter to a friend) influenced him. It may be that the fable was a moral reminder from Dickens to himself, as he teetered on financial ruin. This is the theory proposed in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3098796-the-man-who-invented-christmas">the book by Les Standiford</a> on which this year’s movie is based. </p>
<p>Did Dickens in fact invent Christmas, as we know it? Hollywood may think so, but others, like David Parker in his <a href="https://www.alibris.com/Christmas-and-Charles-Dickens-Mr-David-Parker-PhD/book/8862673"><em>Christmas and Charles Dickens</em></a> vehemently disagree.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198187/original/file-20171207-11347-1lpric4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many believe Dicken’s version of Christmas isn’t religious.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bleeker Street Media/Elevation Pictures)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whatever your opinion, the prevailing wisdom is that <em>A Christmas Carol</em> isn’t particularly religious. As a professor of biblical studies at Concordia University and also a Lutheran minister, I have a different reading.</p>
<p>It’s true that the celebration of the season which Scrooge discovers has much more to do with generosity, family gatherings and large cooked birds, than the Nativity. But maybe those seeking explicit scriptural references in Dickens’ story are underestimating the Victorian novelist’s skill — and his audacity. Perhaps <em>A Christmas Carol</em> contains an alternative to the Bible rather than a simple borrowing from it. And perhaps that’s the point.</p>
<h2>Jesus was a master story-teller</h2>
<p>Jesus, by all accounts another master story-teller, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+16:19-31">told a parable</a> that, stripped of Dickens’ English waistcoats, ledgers, fog and shutters, could almost be a mirror to <em>A Christmas Carol</em>: </p>
<p>“There once was a rich man. A poor man named Lazarus lived at his gate, with nothing to eat. Lazarus died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died.” </p>
<p>There follows, in Jesus’ tale, an exchange between the rich man, who is in torment, and Abraham, who acts as the guardian of paradise. It’s hard not to think of the innocent Lazarus as a precursor to Tiny Tim.</p>
<p>First the rich man asks for his own relief from hell. When that’s denied, he pleads: “I beg you, send Lazarus to my father’s house. I have five brothers. Let him warn them so they don’t come to this place of agony.” Abraham replies: “They have Moses and the prophets. They must listen to them.” </p>
<p>“No, Father Abraham!” cries the rich man, “But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will change” <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+16:19-31">(Luke 16:19-31)</a>.</p>
<p>One can almost hear the chains of Morley’s ghost rattling. What would have happened if Father Abraham had said yes? Something very like a first-century version of <em>A Christmas Carol</em>. </p>
<p>Let’s not forget that the people of our western English-speaking past, especially artists and writers, were imbued with Biblical references and ideas. As <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318117.The_Great_Code">Northrop Frye</a>, among others, has argued, they lived and created in a world shaped by the rhythms, narratives, images and conceptions (or misconceptions) of the King James Bible. </p>
<p>Was Dickens familiar with Christian scriptures? All evidence points to the fact that he was more acquainted than most. Despite an antipathy to organized religion, from 1846 to 1849 Dickens wrote a short biography of Jesus for his children, titled <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_Our_Lord">The Life of our Lord</a></em>. </p>
<p>He forbade that his small retelling of Jesus’ life should be published, until not only he, but also his children, had died. The “Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man” was one of eight stories of Jesus that Dickens chose to include in that volume. But in his story of Scrooge, Dickens was too much of a writer to leave Jesus’ parable as is, and his age too suspicious of scripture to leave it “<a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/391682">unbroken</a>.” </p>
<p><em>A Christmas Carol</em> unites the deliciously horrific sensibility of the Gothic movement with the powerfully simple narrative style, joined to moral concern, typical of parables.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198194/original/file-20171207-11315-msmfev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Christmas Carol may be heavily influenced by The Parable of Lazarus.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Was Dickens perhaps dozing off some Sunday while the rector droned on about Lazarus, until he wakened with a start dreaming of Scrooge? We will never know. But it’s an intriguing possibility. </p>
<h2>Happy endings for the rich</h2>
<p>Surprisingly, the Sunday after Dickens was <a href="http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/charles-dickens">buried</a> in Westminster Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, preaching on exactly this text, spoke of Dickens as the “parabler” of his age. Stanley said that “By [Dickens] that veil was rent asunder which parts the various classes of society. Through his genius the rich man…was made to see and feel the presence of Lazarus at his gate.” </p>
<p>I would go further: Dickens took the parable, and then retold and changed it, so that the rich man gets a second chance. As a privileged societal figure who had gone through financial difficulties and who cared about the poor himself, Dickens freely adapted Jesus to come up with a story that’s ultimately more about love than judgement.</p>
<p>When confronted with Marley’s spectre, Scrooge, unnerved but unrepentant, addresses the apparition: “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.” </p>
<p>The perceptive reader (or viewer) of <em>A Christmas Carol</em> can point a finger at Marley’s ghost and add: “Or maybe you’re an ironic but hope-filled riff on Jesus, by a famous nineteenth-century author who wanted to write his own story of redemption.” </p>
<p>Dickens not only invented this Christmas genre, but imagined a happy ending for himself in it. He penned an enduring story about the second chance even a rich person can receive, if haunted by persistent-enough ghosts.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eGSIioEjcq0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Man Who Invented Christmas (Bleeker Street Media/Elevation Pictures)</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Robert Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When writing A Christmas Carol, did Charles Dickens get his inspiration for Scrooge, Marley’s ghost and Tiny Tim from the Bible?Matthew Robert Anderson, Affiliate Professor, Theological Studies, Loyola College for Diversity & Sustainability, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/687482016-12-20T04:20:42Z2016-12-20T04:20:42ZTofu turkey? Paleo feast? Christmas culinary traditions are ever changing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150636/original/image-20161219-26137-1q42k5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Strawberry Santas are an adorable addition to the evolving traditions of Christmas food. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Dow/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the silly season nears, the popular media obsesses over the tension between serving traditional Christmas fare or adopting current foodie trends. But what are traditional foods other than past trends that have stuck?</p>
<p>Recent <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features30Nov+2013">census results</a> show that many Australians report “no religion”. Yet Christmas remains widely celebrated, combining elements of Christian, commercial and local customs. Naturally, the preparation and consumption of special foods symbolic of the season are in order.</p>
<p>It is widely believed that the Victorian era invented what our modern consumer culture sells today as the perfect Christmas: a family centred festival of generosity and goodwill surrounding a centerpiece feast. Charles Dickens’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5326.A_Christmas_Carol">A Christmas Carol</a> (1843) certainly contributed to the <a href="http://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/christmas.html">popular revival of the festival</a>, despite many Victorians being too impoverished to even aspire to a feast of roast turkey with all the trimmings. From a longer historical perspective, our modern Christmas traditions are little more than a recent rebranding of the primeval winter solstice feast.</p>
<p>The Australian duopoly supermarkets regularly promote a high margin meat showpiece for Christmas, increasingly a whole turkey, something not traditionally on the Christmas menu in Australia. A whole leg of ham is a suggested extra. The centrality of the “main protein” meme is reinforced by such popular television cookery programs as <a href="https://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef">MasterChef Australia</a> and <a href="https://au.tv.yahoo.com/my-kitchen-rules">My Kitchen Rules</a>. </p>
<p>Paul Kelly’s much loved Christmas song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoJxigEuVC4">How to Make Gravy</a> (1996) captures the spirit of cooking an English meal in the sweltering Australian summer. Kelly sings, “They say it’s gonna be a hundred degrees, even more maybe, but that won’t stop the roast”, and then goes on to provide a recipe to sauce it, adding “flour, salt, a little red wine” to the fatty pan juices, as well as the narrator’s special touch, “a dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang”.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uoJxigEuVC4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Despite the usual sultry Australian Christmas Day weather, this Anglo-inspired repast ends with a steamed pudding, heavy with dried fruit and served with a rich egg custard, although today rarely made with the traditional suet (sheep or beef kidney fat). The Americans have long added their own local refinements, such as a Yule log cake – a sponge roll decorated with chocolate icing to resemble a log lying on the forest floor. Europeans have their own specialities such as the Italian <em>panettone</em>, a light fruited yeast bread, and the German <em>stollen</em>, a heavier citrus flavoured loaf with a marzipan centre.</p>
<p>Supermarket campaigns present a range of choices for traditional, Australian (lots of seafood, pavlovas, cherries and mangoes) and Mediterranean inspired meals. There are also dietary influenced diabetic-friendly or Paleo spreads featuring such menu items as avocado mousse, roast turkey with cauliflower “rice” and gluten-free gravy, and raw puddings made with dried fruits, spices, almond meal, coconut oil and maple syrup. </p>
<p>This commercialisation is aided by market segmentation. Where once there were just fruit mince pies for sale at the local bakery, now there is an ever-expanding product selection including local, imported, gluten-free and organic choices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150628/original/image-20161219-28140-171o61e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tofu turkey dinner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jay Ondreicka/Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Vegan meat-alternatives, where plant based foods are processed to resemble various meats, add the “<a href="http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/2447/vegan-christmas-tofu-turkey.aspx">tofu turkey</a>” to the range of possibilities. This is a glazed tofu loaf shaped around a stuffing that can be carved after roasting.</p>
<p>For more than 20 years, meanwhile, the <a href="http://www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au">Sydney Fish Market</a> has been selling mountains of oysters, prawns and other seafood over the December-New Year period. Since 1995, the markets have opened all night in a marathon 36 hour burst before Christmas. Hundreds of tonnes of sea creatures are sold. No one, however, monitors whether these delicacies are served instead of, or in addition to, the ham and the roast.</p>
<p>Each year, starting in November, newspaper and magazine columns and new cookbooks appear addressing the same question – what to eat on an ever expanding series of Christmas festivities: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Christmas evening, Boxing Day, the day-after-Boxing Day, and more. Food writers, chefs, fitness gurus and celebrities also share what they will be cooking, their recommendations all advancing their personal brands as well as adding more choices to the mix.</p>
<p>Menu promotions are aimed at all skill and commitment levels. Last year’s ideas included Heston Blumenthal’s microwavable Christmas pudding with a whole candied orange tucked inside. When first released this created a buying frenzy when the pudding, quickly selling out in British supermarkets, was scalped for as much as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/heston-blumenthal-christmas-pudding-ebay">£250</a> on eBay. For those with more patience, there are elaborate advertorials plugging the culinary equipment of the moment: wood smokers, <em>sous vide</em> immersion cookers, steam ovens and electronic ice cream churns.</p>
<p>In response, some simply surrender to the daunting task of deciding what to eat for Christmas and let someone else decide. In terms of dining out on Christmas day, again a wide range of options are available. Perhaps the best advice comes from cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell: “Follow your bliss”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donna Lee Brien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Christmas foods are evolving. Purists may sniff but what are traditional foods other than past trends that have stuck?Donna Lee Brien, Professor, Creative Industries, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/507712015-12-17T05:11:15Z2015-12-17T05:11:15ZBah, humbug: the misery of Christmas in classic literature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106187/original/image-20151216-25630-1c2a6ht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's often sold as the 'happiest time of year' – but not in classic Christmas tales. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alice Popkorn</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every festive season guarantees a television re-run of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/drafts/52215/edit">National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation</a>, with the deflating turkey, incinerated tree, and extreme Griswold household lighting display that is now sufficiently commonplace for the joke to be compromised. </p>
<p>Most modern Christmas films angle for comedy with a touch of sentimental schmaltz. In contrast, literary Christmases frequently tap into the anxiety and sadness that often accompany the “happiest time of year”.</p>
<p>Charles Dickens’ <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5326.A_Christmas_Carol">A Christmas Carol</a> (1843) is the quintessential Christmas tale. Even for those who have never read any Dickens, the miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge has permeated our culture, from 1940s Scrooge McDuck cartoons to the Muppets adaptation of A Christmas Carol in 1992. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Scrooge (1935). The first sound version of A Christmas Carol.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Money-lender Scrooge’s greed extends to denying the pleasures of Christmas to himself and his employees. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come aid Scrooge in reconciling his pain at the loss of a past love and redeeming himself among the living, so that he can find a welcoming place in the world on Christmas day.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=PdDFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=%22a+christmas+carol%22+%22charles+dickens%22+victorian+christmas&source=bl&ots=IlNcE2yX4K&sig=d9roou2uFOj9TMgF4YJhZ29D2O8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGk8eWh8zJAhXDHKYKHfMJCsQ4ChDoAQg2MAU#v=one">Tara Moore explains</a>, Dickens and other writers in the Victorian period shaped “a certain version of urban Christmas—plum pudding, mourning the lost, holly and hearth-love” that we continue to idealise and reproduce.</p>
<p>Truman Capote’s autobiographical short story <a href="http://www.sailthouforth.com/2009/12/christmas-memory.html">A Christmas Memory</a> (1956) transports the theme of mourning happier times and beloved people from the snowy cobblestone streets of London to small-town Alabama.</p>
<p>The seven-year-old narrator, Buddy, describes the pleasures of a poor – but loving and inventive – Christmas with his elderly cousin, complete with scandalous nips of whisky after baking fruitcakes. </p>
<p>This is Buddy’s last Christmas with her, as he subsequently moves to military school. As time passes, dementia erases the cousin’s memories of Buddy and a November finally arrives,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim: “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other literary Christmases struggle to even find a bittersweet strand to the holiday. Dostoyevsky’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3678110-the-christmas-tree-and-the-wedding">A Christmas Tree and a Wedding</a> (1848) is a disturbing story in which the narrator recalls a past Christmas party in which a male landowner watches a rich girl playing with a doll. </p>
<p>The landowner calculates that when the girl is old enough marry that her dowry will total half a million roubles; he attempts to kiss the girl and extract a promise of love from her. The wedding of the title, which the narrator has just attended, is revealed to be that of the landowner and the rich girl, held five years after their Christmas meeting.</p>
<p>Clement Clarke Moore’s poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171924">’Twas the Night Before Christmas</a> (1823) popularised an idyllic children’s vision of Christmas rendered magical by Saint Nicholas and his flying reindeer. In several of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales with festive settings, however, he does not soften his trademark melancholy for the sake of Christmas cheer.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105161/original/image-20151209-15580-18aem2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stories of perfect Christmases are often tinged with sadness, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Fir Tree’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the little-known story <a href="http://hca.gilead.org.il/fir_tree.html">The Fir Tree</a> (1844), a tree is impatient for the day when it will be tall enough to take the exciting journey that other trees in the forest enjoy each December.</p>
<p>The fir tree is blissful when he is felled, transported, and decorated with candles and a gleaming star for a family’s Christmas Eve celebrations. He is then discarded in the household attic and eventually chopped to pieces and tossed on a fire. “Past! past!” the tree cries as he burns, realising that he should have taken pleasure during his lifetime in the forest, rather than eyeing an unknown future.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMatchGirl_e.html">The Little Match Girl</a> (1845) is similarly heart-rending, as a hungry, barefooted girl attempts to sell matches on snowy streets on New Year’s Eve. </p>
<p>She lights several matches to warm herself and is comforted by a series of visions, including a Christmas scene with a tree shining with “thousands of candles” and a stuffed goose that jumps from its dish,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>and waddle[s] along the floor with a knife and fork in its breast, right over to the little girl.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The girl freezes to death on the street. As is typical of Andersen, her lonely death is intended to be a happy ending, as she will join with her grandmother and God in heaven.</p>
<p>Christmas is a backdrop for confronting feelings of isolation, strangeness and escalating family tensions in a range of fiction. Peter Carey’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316496.Oscar_and_Lucinda?from_search=true&search_version=service">Oscar and Lucinda</a> (1988), set in the 19th century, is a striking example of Christmas serving as a lightning rod for intergenerational conflict. </p>
<p>Oscar’s father, Theophilus, is a fundamentalist Christian preacher who shuns Christmas feasting and celebration as pagan in origin. The servants covertly cook a plum pudding for Oscar, but his father catches him eating the “fruit of Satan” after one life-changing spoonful. </p>
<p>Theophilus strikes his son, forcing him to spit out the forbidden pleasure. Oscar, seeking a divine sign, asks God “if it be Thy will that Thy people eat pudding, then smite him!”. His father is soon bleeding with an injury and Oscar’s rejection of his father’s religion is set in motion. </p>
<p>In literature, as in our lived experiences of Christmas, the expectations of family, togetherness, and plenitude can heighten a sense of loneliness, loss, and conflict. </p>
<p>While there are many cheerful stories of Christmas, for children in particular, a significant number of literary Christmases scratch away at its twinkling veneer of tinsel and goodwill. </p>
<p>There’s an element of humbug in the mythology of Christmas, as Scrooge would have it, after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Smith has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Most modern Christmas films angle for comedy with a touch of schmaltz, but literary Christmases frequently tap into the anxiety and sadness that can accompany the “happiest time of year”.Michelle Smith, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/356132014-12-23T20:07:18Z2014-12-23T20:07:18ZFowl play: why A Christmas Carol meant our goose was cooked<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67566/original/image-20141217-31021-7kndyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The new consumerism of Victorian England was going to change the old ways – for better and for worse.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin Dooley</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In much of the English-speaking world Christmas dinner involves the consumption of turkey – but that was not always the case. The origins of this ritual can be <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Lives-Times-Ebenezer-Scrooge/dp/0300046642">traced back</a> to the generous act of one Ebenezer Scrooge, the reformed miser who on Christmas Day gave a grand turkey to his overworked clerk, Cratchit, in Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5326.A_Christmas_Carol">A Christmas Carol</a>. </p>
<h2>The power of Dickens</h2>
<p>From its initial publication, and ever since, the Carol has been popular. Even today, 170 years later, the infamous Ebenezer Scrooge continues to pleasantly haunt our homes through the medium of television. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67564/original/image-20141217-31034-1n16np3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uncle Scrooge #21 cover. Art by Carl Barks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scrooge has been played by some of the greatest Hollywood Stars, including <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096061/">Bill Murray</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104940/">Michael Caine</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1067106/">Jim Carrey</a>. The Carol informed the Disney production of the popular comic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Scrooge">Uncle $crooge</a> with its idiosyncratic character Scrooge McDuck. </p>
<p>It has been claimed that the Carol is the most adapted story of the English language, each successive generation finding new meanings within the text. The common thread amongst these many adaptations is that Scrooge is the miser. Indeed the word “Scrooge” has entered the modern lexicon becoming synonymous with the idea of miserliness.</p>
<p>At times it’s been alleged that Dickens invented Christmas. Though this idea is clearly an exaggeration, it does provide an insight into the extent of Dickens’ power to conjure culture. </p>
<p>Christmas as the English-speaking world knows it, its ethos, rituals, values and traditions - including the presence of the turkey at the Christmas table, was largely codified by Dickens. </p>
<h2>Scrooge’s gift</h2>
<p>In its original form the Carol revolves around the moral transformation of Scrooge, a miserly man who famously humbugs anything that relates to faith, hope and love. He has a particular dislike for Christmas. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67567/original/image-20141217-31021-1si5u4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Marley’s Ghost’, original illustration by John Leech from A Christmas Carol (1843).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On Christmas Eve, the story goes, Scrooge is haunted by a series of spirits who reveal to him, his past, present and future. Through this supernatural awakening he becomes increasingly concerned about the plight of his fellow human beings. Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning miraculously transformed into a virtuous man who playfully embraces the joy of social living and in particular the celebration of Christmas.</p>
<p>The first social act of this newly reformed Scrooge is to purchase and then gift a giant prize turkey to the family of his underpaid and overworked clerk, Cratchit. </p>
<p>Few things raise the eyebrows of social-anthropologists more than the practice of “gifting” because, as the French sociologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Mauss">Marcel Mauss</a> realised, gifting practices provide a window into the functioning of society. </p>
<p>Scrooge’s act of gifting this prize turkey to Cratchit is not only of interest because it relates to the origin of the practice of serving the Christmas turkey; it is also of interest because it represents a grand symbolic act. </p>
<p>Scrooge’s gifting of this turkey represents a radical transformation in the ethos of Victorian culture - a change in which Dickens, as one of the great conjurers of the modern world, played no small part.</p>
<h2>Consuming Christmas</h2>
<p>In Victorian London, when Dickens wrote the Carol, Christmas day was commonly celebrated by consuming, not a grand turkey, but rather a humble goose. At that time, the turkey was an exotic bird, too expensive for the common person to purchase. </p>
<p>The act of Scrooge sending a gigantic prize turkey to the Cratchits represented a radical change in not only Scrooge’s character, from the cynical miser to the generous spendthrift, but also personified a radical socioeconomic transformation. </p>
<p>A transformation from a more puritan capitalism focused on the accumulation of money to a more hedonistic consumerism focusing on maximising consumption.</p>
<p>One of the striking things about Scrooge’s act of gifting the Cratchits a giant prize turkey was that for Scrooge this gesture was the grandest of jokes – so much of a joke that Scrooge “chuckled till he cried”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67575/original/image-20141218-31049-g5tiuc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scrooge, Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Portland Center Stage</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scrooge’s gift of a turkey is especially interesting when we know that, with the help of the Ghost of Christmas Present, he witnessed the Cratchits celebrating Christmas and banqueting on not a turkey but a goose of “universal admiration”. </p>
<p>Scrooge also becomes aware that everyone in this household “had had enough” to eat. One might read the act of Scrooge gifting the grander turkey as the “humbugging” of this family’s private and traditional celebration of Christmas.</p>
<p>Should we suspect Scrooge of “fowl play”? </p>
<p>A wider reading of the Carol suggests not, that Scrooge had indeed transformed into a virtuous person. Dickens is, rather, warning us that this new consumerism is going to change the old ways – for better and for worse. </p>
<p>This warning becomes even more apparent in an earlier part of the Carol which, un-coincidentally, involves another less palatable turkey. </p>
<p>The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to witness the household of Belle (Scrooge’s ex-fiancée) and sees her family joyfully celebrating Christmas. He lost her due to his pursuit of a “golden idol”. </p>
<p>As the Christmas gifts are being handed to the children this idyllic scene is disrupted when the family come to the urgent suspicion that their baby has swallowed, of all things, the gift of a “fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter”.</p>
<p>Dickens has alerted us to the ghost of his idea - that though it is necessary to embody the spirit of this new consumerist ethic it may well go on to haunt our houses unpleasantly. </p>
<p>Perhaps it would be wiser to settle for the more humble goose, or at least – a smaller mouthful of turkey this Christmas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Gannon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In much of the English-speaking world Christmas dinner involves the consumption of turkey – but that was not always the case. The origins of this ritual can be traced back to the generous act of one Ebenezer…John Gannon, PhD candidate, Anthropology, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.