Thoughts on The Man Who Invented Christmas

I finally had the chance to sit and watch The Man Who Invented Christmas last night. It is based on the book of the same name and is the story of how Charles Dickens came to write the holiday classic, A Christmas Carol.

If you have been a follower of this blog for a while, you know of my love for the story. I have been reading it every year since Jr. High. Here is the blog with that story:

A holiday tradition since 1982 …..

A few years ago, I bought the Annotated A Christmas Carol which had many foot notes and explanations of bits and pieces throughout the story. It is very well written and enlightening. So when I came to watch this movie, I was aware of some of Dickens’ background. I was not, however, aware of just how much of the things and people of his life influenced this story.

I loved seeing how some of the most quotable phrases from the book came to be. I knew he was in a rush to get the book published, but had no idea just how much of a rush. He wrote it in just 6 weeks!

The Goodreads summary of the book says:

As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how one writer and one book revived the signal holiday of the Western world.

Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist.

The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all.

Some of the things in the film had me thinking, “how true is that?” Some research afterward points to the majority of what is in the movie is true. This made it even more enjoyable.

One of the things was that Dickens stated that his characters haunted him and helped him write the story. The movie makes this very real to him. The amazing Christopher Plummer appears as Scrooge. He is fantastic!

I do plan on getting a copy of the book to read, as I am sure that not everything from the book wound up in the movie. If you love the classic tale, I highly recommend this movie. If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can watch it for free on Prime Video.