VIDEO: What Dickens Did For Christmas — londonist.com

Without Charles Dickens, Christmas wouldn’t be the Christmas you know and love (or loathe). The influence of his A Christmas Carol transformed an unpopular festival into one of the best-loved feasts in the Christian calendar. The roast goose tradition? He came up with that. A period of generosity to those less fortunate? He popularised that too. In fact, he is so synonymous with the popularisation of Christmas that when he died in 1870, there’s a story that a costermonger’s little girl in London asked: “Mr Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?”

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