I have been continuing my read of Christmas Books of Dickens. There is a genre of Christmas entertainment – songs, movies, stories – that has been called “Christmas bubblegum”: high on sugar, low on substance. Dickens’ stories, for all their sentiment, could never be classed in it. They have too much sadness, and too much religion. (Dickens also has an unaccountable tendency to detour into ghost stories while telling Yule-tide tales.)
Here is a brief passage from “The Seven Poor Travellers” (available in full here):
Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I thought how the Founder of the time had never raised his benignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious tree. By Cobham Hall, I came to the village, and the churchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, ‘in the sure and certain hope’ which Christmas-time inspired. What children could I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them! No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I remembered that the tomb was in a garden, and that ‘she, supposing him to be the gardener,’ had said, ‘Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.’ In time, the distant river with the ships came full in view, and with it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who arose and followed him, – of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off a little way from shore, by reason of the multitude, – of a majestic figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of night. My very shadow on the ground was eloquent of Christmas; for did not the people lay their sick where the mere shadows of the men who had heard and seen him might fall as they passed along?
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, in the Name of Him who “made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”