Charles Dickens, Christmas and the Curious Secret of Human Happiness
It is not an exaggeration to say that Charles Dickens is perhaps more important to Christmas than even Santa Claus. In fact, Santa Claus only works for Christmas in so far as his lore uses the Dickens’ story structure. Christmas was exported by the English to the world, like the English language and English clothes and English law. Even though in many ways, the sun has set on the British Empire, like the Romans, we still use their roads. The British Empire has enmeshed itself into the world’s very consciousness so fundamentally that to get rid of it would bring about a kind of homelessness in the whole world, yes even those who do not think they are the least bit English.
There is something about Christmas that makes it different from other holidays. Those who argue that it is its money making capacity through the gift-giving and over the top decoration dismiss the fact that every major holiday in every religion includes gift giving and decoration. Yet it is not Diwali or Eid or Hannukah that reigns supreme over the other holidays, it is Christmas. None of these other holidays are as synonymous with “happiness” as Christmas is. And we owe this cultural phenomenon to Charles Dickens.
First, every culture does not have writers, let alone genius writers, to tell the stories of its holidays to its people. As such the holiday becomes a relic, a mute tradition that has a hard time holding on to its lore and passing it on from generation to generation. Without good stories about a holiday, it will not necessarily be forgotten, but it will also not be romanticized, it will not be alive. Stories and art are what preserve the magic of human rituals so that we may be reminded of it and re-create it.
To romanticize something is not to lie about it or exagerrate it. To romanticize something it to write it as a romance, which is a narrative term before all else. A romance is a type of drama that has a crisis, a hero, a heroine, a challenge, an adventure, and finally a satisfying ending. When we tell these types of stories about our lives, we feel that our lives are more satisfying as well. They gain some kind of order which makes us feel significant and important. This is not a lie, we are significant and important, we just don’t always understand in what ways we are, and stories can help us with this.
There are three main ways that Christmas mimics the fundamental requirements of human happiness and this is also a part of the construction of the Dickens Christmas story.
“Happiness is a mystery––generally a momentary mystery––which seldom stops long enough to submit itself to artistic observation, and which, even when it is habitual, has something about it which renders artistic description almost impossible. There are twenty tiny minor poets who can describe fairly impressively an eternity of agony; there are very few even of the eternal poets who can describe ten minutes of satisfaction. Nevertheless, mankind being half divine is always in love with the impossible and numberless attempts have been made from the beginning of human literature to describe a real state of felicity.”
–– G.K. Chesterton
Anticipation, the Birth of Jesus, and the Dickens Plot