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DaveOJ12 t1_j1b685d wrote

"Happy Christmas" doesn't sound right.

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Landlubber77 t1_j1b85ja wrote

"Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering." That's been my favorite quote from A Christmas Carol ever since I googled quotes from A Christmas Carol 16 seconds ago.

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chadslc t1_j1b9se6 wrote

Fun Fact: Most modern celebrations of Christmas are rooted in Dickens, with a Coca-Cola advertising mascot thrown in.

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thewickerstan OP t1_j1ba79b wrote

Replying to chadslc (#1,015,854)

I'd throw Washington Irving in there too.

>One of Irving's most lasting contributions to American culture is in the way that Americans celebrate Christmas. In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, he inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon, an invention which others dressed up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in The Sketch Book, Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned Christmas customs at a quaint English manor which depicted English Christmas festivities that he experienced while staying in England, which had largely been abandoned.

I think it was the book on customs that had such a huge impact on Dickens.

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BrokenEye3 t1_j1bb1hj wrote

Replying to chadslc (#1,015,854)

That's a myth. Harper's magazine was publishing annual cover illustrations of the modern version of Santa decades before anyone at Coca-Cola thought to base a campaign around him. All Coke did was throw additional weight behind the trend.

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BrokenEye3 t1_j1bchwu wrote

Replying to chadslc (#1,015,995)

Not really. His personal appearance was already completely described by Clark Clement Moore in A Visit from St. Nicholas in 1823, a little over 60 years before the Coca-Cola company was even founded, and the Santa Suit had already been developed to to the appoint of having its iconic present day appearance in 1862, 40 years prior to Haddon Sundblom's 1931 Coca Cola campaign. The Coca-Cola company have even gone on record saying they were only copying the look of Thomas Nast's Santa illustrations for Harper's. Only the art itself is original.

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BrokenEye3 t1_j1bdnfw wrote

Replying to chadslc (#1,016,170)

It has everything to do with what you said. Coca-Cola's version of Santa is not and cannot be the predominant version of Santa because they don't have their own version of Santa and never had.

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Illinois_Yooper t1_j1c2h4o wrote

"I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

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burnsbabe t1_j1cdphq wrote

That's funny, since Dickens was English, and it's very American to say "Merry Christmas" instead of the much more English "Happy Christmas".

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SteO153 t1_j1daytw wrote

Replying to spiderzork (#1,016,037)

British traditions as well, as most of the traditions are from the Victorian era. Even the idea of white Christmas seems to be from Dickens, because when he was a kid there was a sort of small glaciation and snow on Christmas day was very common.

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hrudnick t1_j1dpgrc wrote

Then they should have a war on Charles Dickens.

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itskdog t1_j1e2bm5 wrote

Replying to DaveOJ12 (#1,015,523)

At the church I grew up in, it was almost always Happy instead of Merry as there were a few of the older folk who were against alcohol in the church building. (The communion wine was usually grape or cranberry juice)

Merry has hints of getting drunk in it, which wasn't exactly seen as a positive thing.

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tchrbrian t1_j1eldph wrote

I favor the " A Christmas Carol " version with George C. Scott.

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