What is Christmas to you? Presents and carols and fireplaces and sweets and sharing good company while it storms outside your window?
If you enjoy this you should thank Charles Dickens.
Christmas was a minor Christian holiday until Dickens wrote, A Christmas Carol. His ghostly morality play resonated with English speaking audiences all over the world.
The Beatles popularized long hair, Jim Morrison showed off his cut up jeans, but the biggest myth builder in the Anglo-American culture is Dickens.
If we judge authors by the effects they created, Dickens might be the greatest fiction writer in the English Language. Most of his books were written in serials. Chapter came out in the newspapers, month after month, and they were wildly popular. He wrote ultra fast, and he did it all in long hand. He popularized working class culture, regular people trying to better themselves.
If Elvis were a novelist, he would wish he were Charles Dickens.
Jim Miner Author 