REVIVING THE FESTIVE SPIRIT

A Christmas Carol wasn't just a bestseller - it changed the way that Britons chose to mark the festive season

- NIGE TASSELL

Contrary to popular belief, Charles Dickens didn't invent Christmas. However, by the time he sat down to write A Christmas Carol in 1843, the observing of the festive season in Britain was, at the very least, not the great festival celebrated in its medieval heyday. What the tremendous success of A Christmas Carol did - alongside Prince Albert gifting the young Queen Victoria a spruce-fir for a Christmas tree three years earlier - was to both revive and reinvent the festivities in this country, returning it towards a level of popularity enjoyed across continental Europe, particularly in Albert's native Germany.

CHANGING OPINIONS