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

1. Anticipation, the Birth of Jesus, and the Dickens Plot

Happiness is not one constant state of being, it is a change from one terrible state to an improved one. In this way, happiness is actually a drama and a key element of drama (and therefore happiness) is anticipation.

If we got everything we wanted the moment we wanted it, or worse, it existed in our possession before we even knew we desired it, we would be deprived of the ability to desire at all. Not only would we not appreciate our gifts, we would certainly not even perceive them as such. Water does not taste so good as when it quenches a desperate thirst. Food does not taste so good as when the stomach is gnawing itself with hunger.

The modern Christmas tradition involves many different versions of anticipation in both a religious and secular sense. The purpose of these traditions is to mimic a house that is waiting for the birth of a baby. Everyone is counting down the days with advent calendars or count down clocks. Gifts are wrapped and put under the Christmas tree, and cannot be opened until the big day. There is also, of course, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive on Christmas Eve. In the religious sense, the whole of the Old Testament was an anticipation for the birth of Jesus Christ to save all humanity. 

People, especially children, can hardly sleep at night while they wait for Christmas morning. When we are children, we must wait for many things and because we turn them into such great events, even something as small as waiting for a slumber party at our cousin’s house can turn into a momentous occasion of great significance and happiness. But as adults, there are few external limits upon us and we can do whatever we want whenever we want to. The Christmas traditions help even adults feel what it is like to be a child again by putting these external limits on us again. Parents count down the days until their children come home to visit. Lovers eagerly try to catch each other under the mistle toe. Friends wonder what could be wrapped in the shiny paper for them. There is a great deal of delayed gratification and this delay is what makes the gift gratifying at all.

This quality of anticipation creates drama. We must wait to see how the plot unfolds. Everything is revealed at once, in one theatrical moment at Christmas, not over time and slowly. This is also how Dickens reveals his twists of fate in his story. The boy suddenly finds out he has inherited a great fortune. The selfish man suddenly delivers toys and gifts to all the poor. 

In order for there to be gratification, there must first be want. In order for there to be a moment of happiness, there must first be sadness. This is the whole theology of the birth of Christ: first people were sad and then happy when He was born. It was a dramatic change in the course of the Abrahamic religion and the traditions of Christmas aim to mimic this drama so people may feel it every year anew. Dickens understood this and it is why he wrote his Christmas stories in the same way.

2. Challenge

One of the central aspects of Christmas happiness is coziness and warmth. There is a grand difference between the warmth of a summer day and the warmth when one is in the house by a roaring fire, protected from the cold and snow outside. The warmth of summer, one can almost take for granted because it is all around us all the time. Whereas the warmth in contrast to a blizzard makes home feel that much cozier. All comfort is based on discomfort.

In fact the comfort of winter stands in contrast to the comfort of summer because the comfort of winter must be earned and created whereas the comfort of summer is given to us by nature. To be comfortable in summer, one must do nothing but exist. Whereas to be comfortable in the winter requires us to build good houses, chop firewood, bake warm food, and conjure light. Comfort in winter is a testament to man’s manliness––humanity’s humanness. Christmas in the winter is to be joyful even when the material world is sad and dormant.

“It is this contradiction and mystical defiance which gives a quality of manliness and reality to the old winter feasts which is not characteristic of the sunny felicities of the Earthly Paradise.”

- G.K. Chesterton

This may seem like a trite observation we have all made before, but this forms part of the bigger secret of human happiness: we cannot be as happy as we are in contrast to a challenge.The Princess is never so dear as after she’s been rescued from the clutches of a monster. The victory is never so sweet as when it’s been earned after many hardships and losses. This is the central feature of the Dickens story that makes people over the generations continually return to his work: none of his characters really have it easy. Everyone has some kind of challenge they must overcome. 

Dickens writes about those people with the worst fates, the poor of Victorian England, and the way that they overcome their challenges something nobly, sometimes not, but always in a very human way, and this is what links all his stories to Christmas so much. Would Ebenezer Scrooge’s story be so compelling if he were a generous and kind man from the beginning? Would his lessons be as shocking and interesting if he did not fear for his life when he met his spirits?

If we were in some kind of Elysium or Utopia where we we had our every desire, we would feel it an empty homelessness rather than happiness because as a rule, human happiness can only exist in contrast to challenge. Even holly is prickly.

3. The Grotesque

Charles Dickens’ stories have the most memorable characters in perhaps all of English Literature. What makes these characters so memorable is not merely that they are very human, many writers including Dostoevsky and Tolstory writer very memorable and human characters. Rather, what makes Dickens’ characters so excellent and “Christmassy” is that they are funny! His characters have all their hilarious qualities and clumsiness that bring us joy in real life. Corpulence, fat bellies, big ears, red bulbous noses, mouths shaped like post boxes, all these features I remember laughing out loud at when I first read Dickens’ stories. Even the names are written to make you laugh because they are so silly. What kind of a name is Pumblechook? If you have a three year old around, say that word to him and he might laugh.

If you have every properly laughed, it is not a beautiful sight, it is not something dignified. A real laugh is loud, obnoxious, silly and often embarrassing. Real joy is not “beautiful,” it is silly. This silliness, grotesqueness is part of real happiness that most descriptions of happiness miss. This is why Santa has to be fat. This is why our real family members are embarrassing. And Dickens’ characters have all these qualities of the real people who are close enough to us that we can be grotesque with them and feel real joy.

The Christmas Carol is a happy story. It describes an abrupt, dramatic change: a man experiences a sudden, overnight conversion to goodness. It takes place in a very wintry winter, that characterizes the coziness and challenge of real happiness. Finally, it is funny and grotesque. No one in the Christmas Carol is quite dignified and decorous. In fact, Scrooge is ugliest when he is the most happy and full of joy. 

“The turkey that Scrooge bought was so fat, that it could never have stood upright”  - Charles Dickens

Perhaps by re-creating these three qualities in our lives and in our stories about our lives, we may keep a Christmassy quality all year round…or perhaps, it’s better that we have to wait for it to happen once a year ;)

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angle, I am as merry as a schoolboy, as giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to everybody! A Happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!” - Scrooge, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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Dear readers,

I am beginning my book club in the new year starting on January 14. It will take place every Sunday at 12 EST as well as on a community discord forum. I will introduce an excerpt or two of brilliant literature and the context around it and we can have some delectable discussions about them! If you or anyone you know would love to be a part of such a club, then please visit the link to sign up! I have done something like this before and it was just such a great way to bring great art into our lives and to make friends. I hope you will join!