Feature

Christmas Before Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’ name conjures up the quintessential English Christmas. What were festivities like before their Victorian makeover?
David Chandler | Published in History Today Volume 68 Issue 12 December 2018
A wealthy man stands at the gate of his mansion handing out food to the poor at Christmas, etching by R. Seymour, 1831. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

A perennial myth about the traditional English Christmas claims it all began with Charles Dickens. It was out in full commercial force last year, with the appearance of the big-budget film The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring Dan Stevens gamely playing the young Dickens having his Big Idea. The myth says much more about us than it does about Dickens, though. On both sides of the Atlantic, Christmas has been Victorianised and the door quietly closed on deeper imaginative and cultural continuities.

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