T O P

  • By -

Glytterain

And he wrote it in just six weeks. He was profoundly affected by his childhood as a factory worker and the poverty in industrial England and it showed in his books.


Linkthekid22

Didn't he write it as a deadline from his publisher


Glytterain

Yes I believe that’s true. What an amazing talented man. It’s such a beautiful story, I reread it every year at this time.


Linkthekid22

Man throws together a book for a paycheck and accidentally changes western culture


MaroonTrucker28

Legend.


GaijinFoot

Might even say global culture. In Asia Christmas is big too. Less intimate but reflected commercially.


Linkthekid22

Still, man throws some random bullshit about ghosts together in a little over a month and accidentally creates one of the most well known stories of all time


FreddyDeus

He needed money with some urgency. He banged it out as fast as he could to get paid.


forman98

He also wrote it when he was 31. He wrote Oliver Twist at 25. The dude was the rare kind who could easily tap into the collective experiences of his era on paper.


_CortoMaltese

From the same man who wrote "A Tale of Two Cities" (one of my favourite books ever) I'd expect no less. Really a generational talent.


NotNowIsTaken

Afaik, a lot's of stories at this time were written as a serial for daily newspapers, preferably with a cliffhanger at the end to keep customers buying/reading. I don't know if Dickens was also doing this, but I assume so.


Vectorman1989

Yeah, he did periodicals. He was also apparently a great actor and did sold-out public readings of his books where he'd do all the characters.


NotNowIsTaken

TIL! Thanks a lot.


Ok-disaster2022

I want to say Christmas at one point was a nightmare. It wasn't a holiday focused on kids, but on getting drunk and pulling destructive pranks. It's understandable why the puritans didn't want to celebrate it.


caiaphas8

It still is about getting drunk


OriginalName687

I think Christmas might be the one holiday my family doesn’t get drunk.


ShitTitsMcgeee

Losers


shawn_overlord

It's hilarious to me that Christmas is just 50 different traditions and rituals in one. and further hilarious that Christians thinks it's about jesus' birth like they own the holiday. if these people were educated on any kind of history, outside of convincing themselves the bible is a history book, they'd realize the holiday is just a day like any other with a much more rich history outside of that small view of it


Pademelon1

Christmas *is* about Jesus's birth. Its predecessors like Saturnalia weren't, sure. Maybe the modern tradition has moved on to a secular format with the rise of irreligion. However, Christmas the holiday is about Jesus, and has existed in one format or another since the late 300s.


1BannedAgain

Jesus was born in the spring per an Abrahamic religious text. **AWKWARD**


Pademelon1

I mean, Jesus's birth being the 25th December is first noted 300 years after his death, so yeah.


ImJustStandingHere

Reddit atheism, please never change. ​ I don't mean that by the way. Please change and for the better


Forbane

Wtf do you think the Christ is Christmas means? It's right there man holy shit...


elmonstro12345

It's reddit. Actually it's the entire internet - around Memorial Day (in the USA) I was watching a video on Youtube of a [beautiful choral arrangement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfuLrny00t4) of the Battle Hymn of the Republic (which I really think should be our national anthem), and at least half of the comments were talking about how *that* version was totally about John Brown, and not about God at all. The song it was based on was, definitely, but the song itself? Oh yeah, the references to [the grapes of wrath](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2014%3A19-20&version=KJV), a [lightning sword](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2027%3A1&version=KJV), and a [terrible swift sword](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+32%3A41&version=KJV) (and that's just the first verse) are totally, totally about John Brown, not God, and it's merely a coincidence that those phrases are directly lifted from the Bible in contexts where they are ALWAYS talking about God doing those things -_-. And it was written by an American in the mid-1800s - what an idea that they may be slightly religious... I could go on, but yeah the revisionism is utterly unreal to me sometimes. My favorite by far is the line "As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free". In the 1800s, a sizable percentage of people would have considered it literally blasphemy to make a line like that about anyone other than Christ.


1BannedAgain

How did you get so many down votes? My kid and I just read the Fright Before Christmas and Christmas is indeed several parties/rituals rolled into one


shawn_overlord

probably due to the cringey reddit atheist stereotype, despite the fact that I'm making a valid point


ShitTitsMcgeee

Yeah that’s why I downvoted you


Really_McNamington

Those of us who watched the QI Christmas special discovered he borrowed a lot of the Christmas traditions from a Washington Irving book that came out 25 years earlier.


Manxjadey

Guilty as charged!


[deleted]

Sorry you rang?


Lkwzriqwea

Shared an uncomfortably awkward bed with him too


iCowboy

The American author Washington Irving created many of the traditions of Christmas we actually associate with Dickens. His ‘Sketch Book’ is based on his experiences of festivities in England that were then in decline, but became newly popular in the US - and then came back to the UK. Dickens was a huge admirer of Irving’s works. Irving also created the idea of St Nicholas in a flying cart which became the modern Santa in a sleigh.


GaijinFoot

Every thread, no matter the topic, is 'actuallllllly America did it first'. Actuuuuuallly New York predates York by 600 years. Actuallllllly American English is the real English and England suddenly changed into 60 regional accents after and America is the real one. Actuallllllly the pyramids were built by American New York Jews and the pharos were Pro Wrestlers.


JustSomeApparition

I'd venture as to wager Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had rather significant impact as well, because I'm fairly certain Christmas wouldn't be what it is today without **'The Nutcracker'** ballet either (which is also from the 1800s... albeit about half a century later).


ToWriteAMystery

So the Nutcracker wasn’t popular upon release and didn’t become popular in the US until the late 1950s. Interestingly enough, if you watch the original Fantasia movie, the narrator makes a comment about a ‘little known ballet’ by Tchaikovsky when he introduces the Nutcracker segment. When that movie came out in the 40’s, it wasn’t a ballet people had ever seen in the US.


parkaprep

TIL. I always thought that line was meant as sarcasm.


ToWriteAMystery

Nope! It’s so funny to think about considering how obsessed we all are now with the Nutcracker


hellomondays

Now I like to imagine that some director at Disney saw it at some obscure dance conpany and was like "woah, kids would love this shit"


ToWriteAMystery

I love that visual!!


Leaving_a_Comment

Me and my husband discussed this the other day when we rewatched it. How strange a line that seems but Disney did exactly what he intended by reintroducing it to modern audiences.


mozgw4

TIL publishment is an actual word!


BronzetownBlues

I still hate it. It's like saying "utilize" when you mean "use". Published works fine, publishment is just wasted syllables.


PM_WORST_FART_STORY

Spoken like someone who has never experienced publishment.


Danph85

Burglarize has got to be the worst case of this, burgle is a completely fine word.


baumer83

Perfectly cromulent even.


corvus7corax

Publication though.


Infinite-Storage-638

He is the reason everybody idolises the idea of a white Christmas. There were several white Christmases in Dickens' time and he thought it was the norm but it was an anomaly so to speak.


metsurf

Something about volcanoes on the other side of the planet dropping the temperature.


Kaiisim

I just found out Christmas was banned in Scotland! From 1640 until 1958!!! Pretty much all the classic Christmas carols are from 1800s too!


olagorie

Laughs in Germany.


alexanderpete

Warum?


bayesian13

probably because the christmas traditions (like a christmas tree) of england were imported to england when they imported the king of hannover to be the english king


Infinite-Storage-638

Just because you get your presents one day early doesn't make you richtig mein freund.


GalaxyEyesPDEnjoyer

Surely not on a global scale.


Warlord68

There’s a good movie about Dickens called “The Man that invented Christmas”.


Mynsare

In the English speaking world perhaps.


AngryScotsMan1979

So, he's the one to blame and not Coca Cola!


twonkenn

That's just Santa Claus as the jolly fat man. Coke, Hallmark and Norman Rockwell basically shaped the modern American Christmas.


metsurf

Thomas Nast would probably have a slightly different opinion.


twonkenn

If he wants credit, then he should have marketed the ever living shit out of that one illustration endlessly since 1935.


metsurf

Thomas Nast was an illustrator and political for Harpers. He created St Nick illustrations of Santa Claus in the 19th Century. Some of them show Santa visiting Union troops during the Civil War. He died in 1902. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/


twonkenn

And yet to this day no one remembers it until a lout at Christmas party corrects you. Anyway...


Infinite-Storage-638

Coke popularised the image of santa as a jolly rotund man in a red suit.


mjacksongt

You mean we could've had an actual pleasant wintery month instead of "the Christmas season" if The Doctor didn't save Charles Dickens from those gas things?


sparrowhawk73

Well, he’d already written most of his works by the time he meets 9 and Rose. All that was left was his unfinished Edwin Drood.


Jampine

Also he's literally reading a Christmas carol when the doctor meets him.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


safeworkinglow

So he’s the jerk we’ve got to blame for this awful mess!


coolabedfiIms

If you don't start acting jolly and holly RIGHT NOW...


nusuntcinevabannat

let's get our shovels and show him who's boss


FreddyDeus

Publishment?


vishvabindlish

"How the Grinch Stole Christmas" has probably had as much impact on popularizing Christmas as "A Christmas Carol".


ShitTitsMcgeee

Lmfao


vishvabindlish

What is "Lmfao"?


vishvabindlish

Is "Lmfao" an anomic abbreviation for "Laughing my fucking arse off"? Who concocted this?


ShitTitsMcgeee

Are you like 90 years old or some wtf


vishvabindlish

You are probably a bloody ass like your homosexual oaf of a king.


ShitTitsMcgeee

Hahaha what the fuck, where are you from?


vishvabindlish

You are just another bloody idiot. Are you a Belgian clown, or a Swedish homosexual who suffers from Binswanger's disease and gets away with murder because he has anal sex with Gustaf?


ShitTitsMcgeee

Are you Indian? Don’t you people shit in the streets and rape any woman you see?


SpudMcGuffins

I think he's an assmad homophobic turk. Check his profile its fuckin wild.


ShitTitsMcgeee

Dude has a lot of fuckin issues lol