Alaskan Range: Mr Christmas
...in Dickens’ words, "a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys"...
Greg Hill serves up a suitably tasty dish of Christmas words.
When it comes to Christmas and the holiday season, there are always extremists among us, either frowning at frivolity, wallowing in commercial greed, or celebrating too exuberantly.
An Englishman, Andy Park, is firmly in the latter category. Park decided in the early 1990s to make his mark by celebrating the secular parts of Christmas every single day and bestowing upon himself the title of “Mr. Christmas”. According to numerous British newspapers, the BBC, and Wikipedia, every single day Park gives himself a gift and watches a video of the latest version of the Queen’s annual Christmas Day broadcast. He also eats a traditional dinner daily consisting of turkey, mince pies, roast potatoes and gravy, mushy peas and stuffing balls, and guzzles a bottle of champagne and sherry.
“Mr. Christmas” is closing in on Santa’s physique, too. As of his last estimate, six years ago, he’d consumed 4,380 turkeys, 87,600 mince pies, 26,280 potatoes, 4,380 bottles each of champagne and sherry, and 5,000 bottles of wine. He’s also gone through 30 artificial trees and an estimated 10,000 meters of tinsel, has made several unsuccessful recordings about his exploits, and is clearly a travesty.
The real Mr. Christmas, Charles Dickens, earned that reputation for reviving popular interest in traditional holiday celebratory activities through his annual Christmas books and short stories that came out in the 1840s and 1850s. As described by his French biographer, Andre Maurois, reading these works you see “Dickens is at his happiest … there are certain words which perpetually occur: there is ‘brisk’, there is ‘jolly’, there are all the adjectives expressive of openheartedness, cheerfulness, sympathy, zeal.”
Most modern readers are only familiar with 1843’s “A Christmas Carol” and don’t know Dickens’ other Christmas books: “The Chimes” (1844), “The Cricket on the Hearth” (1845), “The Battle of Life” (1846), and “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain” (1848). The later books were best sellers in their day, but none have held up like his first effort.
The inspiration for “Christmas Carol” had several sources. In early 1843, Dickens saw children laboring in Welsh tin mines, toured London’s Field Lane Ragged School for illiterate street children, and read a Parliamentary report on child labor abuses. He began a political pamphlet on the subject but instead decided to dramatize the situation with his now-famous novel that came out in December 1843.
Dickens himself had been previously inspired about traditional English Christmas celebrating in 1822 after reading an American author, Washington Irving. “The Sketch Book”, published in England in 1820, was Irving’s magnum opus. It was a collection of short tales and essays designed to appeal to readers on both sides of the Atlantic, and it included a story about the traditional Christmas celebrations at a fictional northern English manor Irving called Bracebridge Hall. Dickens reinterpreted this in 1833 in his first hit book, “The Pickwick Papers”, my favorite of his works, which was written in monthly installments. The December chapter mirrored many of the Bracebridge holiday activities: dancing, feasting, games, and general equanimity and openhandedness.
“Christmas Carol” was a huge hit that has never been out of print. After his death, Dickens’ manuscript of the book, full of his notes and alterations, became a sought-after prize of wealthy bibliophiles. The winner was J.P. Morgan, who bought it in 1902, and today the manuscript resides in the Morgan Library, where a page a year is exhibited to the public. However, this year the NY Times got permission to photograph the entire manuscript and put it online at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/30/nyregion/dickens-christmas-carol-pages.html, where you can see the character flaws Dickens didn’t give Scrooge and how he changed the ending at the last-minute.
You can also read how Dickens encountered a medical friend, Dr. Miles Marley, at an 1843 St. Patrick’s Day party and told him, “Your name will be a household word before the year is out.” It’s in “The Annotated Christmas Carol” at your public library, where the library laborers wish you and yours a happy and joyful holiday season; in Dickens’ words, "a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys".
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To read more of Greg's extra-special words please visit http://www.openwriting.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=greg+hill
