This past weekend, Linda was in Franklin, Tn. Visiting our son and his family and picking up her new ride. While there, the Dickens Christmas Festival was taking place on Saturday in downtown Franklin. Linda said there were only about 17 million people there but it was beautiful. They had Victorian era activities, musical and dance performances, horse-drawn carriage rides and over 70 stores and vendors make it a special event.
I did some looking back on Charles Dickens to see what I could find out about his writing of the famous story, A Christmas Carol. Here is some info that I found to be very interesting.
It seems that over 200 years ago, England and Great Britain went through a spell where Christmas was almost totally forgotten. The big newspaper, The Times, did not mention Christmas, not even one time, from 1790 to 1835. It seems like Charles Dickens was the one person who was very instrumental in reviving Christmas during this time in Britain’s history. In 1843 he wrote his book ‘A Christmas Carol’ and it appears that he had several reasons for writing it. The situation in Great Britain, at the time, was that unemployment and famine were widespread. It was reported that about 1 in 10 people were as poor as you can possibly imagine, or maybe even worse than we can probably imagine. Dickens had a deep desire to challenge the Government and challenge the wealthy to have heartfelt compassion for others who were less fortunate. So, he developed this character Ebenezer Scrooge who brings that challenge into focus.
Today, when we read that story, there are not many people who want to be like Scrooge was at the start of the book. I believe that we all hope we can become more like the happy, generous Scrooge that we see in the last scenes of the book (or movie). Dickens’ book helped to revive Christmas traditions of generosity within their country.
As we look around, let us act generously to those who are less fortunate. But as Christians, let take that with us throughout the entire year.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year,
David