Can anyone think of Christmas without thinking of Dickens, the man who virtually invented it? Recurring throughout his writing, it figures as his most powerful symbol of community, humanity and the possibility of redemption. In the Christmas Books these positive themes are dramatized against surprisingly dark backgrounds. ‘The Chimes’ is a fantasy of loss and regeneration featuring the father–daughter relationship which so preoccupied this writer. In ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’ and ‘The Battle of Life’, marriage is put under the microscope. ‘The Haunted Man’ is a study of obsession, a parable of memory and forgetfulness. But what most readers will recognize as the perfection of seasonal stories is A Christmas Carol which comes as near to fairy tale as Dickens ever did. This drama of a man redeemed by ghostly visions of past and future has appeared in many versions since but none can quite match the original, and Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Marley’s Ghost and Tiny Tim have achieved a classic status which is proof against any parody.
