22 December 2023. Just Two Things Xmas Stocking.
The invention of Christmas // 52 Things from 2023 // Science photos // Books and music
Something a bit different for my last post before Christmas. I know that no-one’s got any time right now, so I’ve popped in one longer seasonally themed piece, and a few shorter things that you can dip into.
A reminder that if you don’t see Just Two Things in your inbox, it might have been routed to your spam filter. Comments are open. And—have a good holiday.
Just Two Things expects to be back on 3rd January, but may pop up during the break if inspiration strikes.
1: Charles Dickens and the idea of Christmas
The modern British Christmas wasn’t invented by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol, although people have made that claim. But the book did shape strongly the way we think about Christmas. A Christmas Carol was an immediate best-seller when it was first published in December 1843, selling 6,000 copies in a few days. It tapped into a whole set of latent 19th century desires about the idea of Christmas.
(The frontispiece of the first edition of A Christmas Carol. Public Domain/Project Gutenberg)
If you have somehow missed out on A Christmas Carol, it’s the story about Scrooge, his poverty-stricken clerk Bob Cratchit and Bob’s crippled son Tiny Tim, and the three ghosts, or rather four, including that of his former business partner Bob Marley.
There’s some other bits in there, but basically it is a redemption story in which a man is redeemed by embracing the spirit of Christmas. It’s been remade as a play and a film hundreds of times in the past 180 years.1 The year after the book came out there were eight different theatre productions running in London.
There’s a full text on Project Gutenberg. Or alternatively, the trailer for the historically unreliable The Man Who Invented Christmas might act as a reminder.
The idea of Christmas was in need of renovation when Dickens wrote the book. The traditional English Christmas was a rural affair, and by 1843, after Britain’s rapid industrialisation, most people were living in the cities. There’s a BBC documentary from the mid-2000s presented by Griff Rhys-Jones in which he explains that in 1843, the journalists and printers on The Times were hard at work on Christmas Eve preparing the usual edition for 25th December. In the story, of course, the shops are open on Christmas morning.
Some of the trappings of our modern Christmas were already in place, at least for the well-off. The idea of the Christmas tree was imported by our German royal family in the 1790s, and celebrated by Victoria and Albert when she became Queen. That had been copied by the aristocracy, but hadn’t yet worked its way through to the middle classes.
Thomas Hervey’s book The Christmas Book, published in 1836, also on Project Gutenberg, was a kind of compendium of Christmas traditions, and was almost certainly known to Dickens. It’s sub-titled “Customs, ceremonies, traditions, superstitions, fun, feeling, and festivities of the Christmas Season.”
Bristol University, which has a first edition in its collection, described it like this:
Among the holiday customs depicted are traditions that are still very familiar today, such as carol singing, kissing under the mistletoe, and Christmas dinner, turkeys for which were transported by coach with “…hampers piled on the roof and swung from beneath the body, and its birds depending, by every possible contrivance, from every part from which a bird could be made to hang.”
It was illustrated by Robert Seymour, who had illustrated Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836-1837, which also has a description of a Christmas dinner in it.
But Dickens did three things with A Christmas Carol. The first was to pull together this whole narrative about an urban Christmas together into one short, accessible story. (Dickens was 31 when it was published, and it has the energy of a young man about it.)
The second was to write a best-seller with this idea of Christmas at its heart. The book was re-printed and also pirated, of course, and Dickens later started to give readings to make sure he got the full benefits of authorship.
But the third was to frame this idea of Christmas around giving. We remember (spoilers!) the final scenes of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge sends the turkey round to the Cratchit’s house: a turkey is a step up the social ladder from their goose—it has more meat on it. In the BBC documentary, the actor Patrick Stewart, who has performed the role of Scrooge, underlines that this is also about the gift of yourself. The whole sub-plot about Scrooge’s nephew repeatedly inviting Scrooge to Christmas dinner is about this, as is the scene where the young Scrooge breaks off his engagement.
(‘Mr Fezziweg’s Ball’. Illustration for Christmas Carol by John Leech. Public Domain)
It’s also about giving to those less fortunate than yourself. Dickens was appalled by the squalor and poverty of Britain’s industrial cities, and the indifference of the wealthy to this. The Spirit of Christmas Present travels with two young children, Ignorance and Want, under their cloak. When Scrooge sees them, the Spirit plays back to Scrooge the lines with which he has dismissed charity collectors earlier in the book:
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
After A Christmas Carol, the celebration of Christmas accelerated. The Christmas card, also sent for the first time in 1843, became part of the tradition. The Christmas cracker was invented in 1847. Some astute media management by the Royal Family saw a set of woodcuts of Christmas at Windsor Castle published in the Illustrated London News, after which anyone who could afford it started having a Christmas tree.
(The Royal Christmas tree, 1848. Illustrated London News.)
Each generation gets the versions of A Christmas Carol it wants to see. As Christopher Pittard noted at The Conversation,
The Victorians read it as a retelling of the Biblical Christmas story, focusing on Scrooge’s pilgrimage. The Edwardians recast A Christmas Carol as a children’s story. It was only in the 1930s, following the Wall Street Crash, that Dickens’ text was adopted as a critique of the dangers of capitalism, a historically situated interpretation that survives today.
Pittard references here the literary scholar Paul Davis, and his book The Life and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. In the 1950s and 1960s, Scrooge’s redemption became a kind of therapy. In the 1980s, as neoliberalism takes hold (think about the Bill Murray version) it becomes a battle between self-interest and altruism—shareholder capitalism and stakeholder capitalism, if you like.
Pittard’s article was prompted by the film The Man Who Invented Christmas, and he wonders if the next cycle might be about Scrooge and fake news. Scrooge initially puts his vision of Marley’s ghost down to “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese.” There’s a recurring theme in the book about what you can and can’t believe, whether what you are seeing is real or not.
2: The stocking
52 Things
Some columns become something of an institution, and Tom Whitwell’s annual compendium of ‘52 Things I Learned In...’ is one of these. I’m going to pick out three or four of the 52 Things here, with, as ever, the suggestion that spending some time with the whole list is always worthwhile.
Job satisfaction in the US is at a 35-year-high. In 2010, less than 45% of people said they were satisfied with their jobs. In 2022, over 62% said they were, and you need to go back to the 80s to find satisfaction as high as today. Big gains come from work/life balance and the performance review process. Emily Peck...
Canadian researchers gave homeless people $7,500 in a bank account that they could spend on anything they wanted. They spent it on food, clothes, and rent. Many moved into stable housing and saved enough to give them some stability. Sigal Samuel
Scotland’s forest cover is nearly back to where it was 1,000 years ago, while England has risen to levels last seen in 1350. Hannah Ritchie
I’ve picked out here the kinds of things that Just Two Things is interested in. Some of them are quirkier:
For both stone-age people and modern enthusiasts, making flint tools is surprisingly dangerous. Nicholas Gala.
Science photos
The Royal Society has returned after a four year break. It announced the winners and runners up of its 2023 photography competition this week, and the photographs they have selected are uniformly excellent.
Depending on how you take in information, there is a short (< 2 minutes) video — or you can look through the photographs in your own time here.
Books
The final SOIF newsletter of the year had a selection of books that my colleagues (and me) had found interesting in 2023. It’s not available online, and it’s a nice selection, so I am reposting it here.
Katie Isbell writes: This is one of my favourite quotes from Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer: “Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” A beautiful, poetic, humbling tale of humans' relationship with the Earth. Deep thinking and heart feeling in every page... and lots to learn from!
Peter Glenday writes: I discovered Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress in the airport on my way back from the UNESCO-PMU Symposium 2023: Towards Evaluation Frameworks for Futures Literacy and Foresight. It dates from 1971, and it’s a slightly trippy read, but also a short and insightful one. The line that has stayed with me: "The guerillas hadn't yet hit upon the idea of kidnapping futurologists".
Lenka Chobotová writes: Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Darkgave me solace while watching the news unfold, whether in Gaza or in my home country of Slovakia. I found myself coming back to several passages in the book, including this one: “Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”
Darja Vrščaj writes: Nihal Arganayake's book Let's talk: How to have better conversations has made me reflect on how I am connecting to people when I talk to them. The book holds insightful tips about advancing listening skills, which are so valuable in our age when virtual meetings and virtual work, as well as being glued to a smart phone, have become the norm.
Andrew Curry writes: The book that had the biggest impact on me this year was Dougal Hine’s At Work in the Ruins. Hine was one of the co-founders of the Dark Mountain Project, and his book is quiet and thoughtful about what we do, and how we live, in the ruins of modernity. I reviewed it here.
(Thanks to my departing colleague Mudabbir Maajid for putting together the front covers)
Music
And a reminder, if you missed it last week, that I produce an annual ‘off centre’ playlist of seasonal music on Spotify. It’s a mix of Christmas and winter music, but without the songs you’ll hear in a shopping mall. This year it’s also pretty safe for work, and kids. (I think Christy Moore and maybe Shane MacGowan use a couple of Irish colloquialisms, but nothing serious.)
j2t#527
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Obviously the best of these is the A Muppet Christmas Carol. Unarguably.