{"id":24905,"date":"2016-11-08T07:12:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T14:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=24905"},"modified":"2016-11-08T07:12:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T14:12:29","slug":"dickens-new-christmas-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/dickens-new-christmas-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Stevens to Portray Charles Dickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CharlesDan Stevens — the actor once-upon-a-time who played Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey<\/em> — has been cast to play Charles Dickens in a new movie to be titled The Man Who Invented Christmas<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n

This is a project both to greatly anticipate and to loathe. <\/p>\n

The story of Dickens and his creation of A Christmas<\/a> Carol<\/em> is a great Christmas<\/a> story in it’s own right. We celebrate Dickens after 200 years because A Christmas<\/a> Carol<\/em> has become such an integral part of our modern Christmas<\/a> celebrations that we cannot think of Christmas<\/a> without it. <\/p>\n

The Christmas<\/a> music world clings to White Christmas<\/a><\/em> as it’s standard. The film world claims It’s A Wonderful Life<\/em> as it’s Christmas<\/a> gold star. But A Christmas<\/a> Carol<\/em> is the precursor of them both, headlining the world of Christmas<\/a> literature a full century ahead of both White Christmas<\/a><\/em> and It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em>. It is about time the story of Dickens is told. <\/p>\n

But the premise of both the title — and, we assume, of the story — is that Christmas<\/a> was somehow dead in the eyes of the world when Dickens went to work on A Christmas<\/a> Carol<\/em>. <\/p>\n

And that makes this a project to dread. It will, in the end, perpetuate this lie<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

During the Industrial Revolution, Christmas<\/a> as an institution had kind of fallen out of favor, due to growing modernism and mid-1800s Puritans, to whom any whiff of happiness is suspect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We love<\/a> and celebrate Charles Dickens. For over two decades we have declared him a Christmas legend<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n

But Dickens didn’t invent Christmas<\/a> and he most certainly did not save it. <\/p>\n

Christmas<\/a> saved Dickens. <\/p>\n

And that’s the real history and the real truth behind the story. <\/p>\n

It pains us to see projects like this come forward because Hollywood creation is what fuels modern Christmas<\/a> myths. One need only look at Elf<\/a><\/em> from 2004 or even Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer<\/em> of 1964 to see that. Hollywood simply changes the story. <\/p>\n

That would be a tragedy in the case of Charles Dickens because he was a real person and his story is strong enough to stand on it’s own as an inspiration without all the false superlatives. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Stevens — the actor once-upon-a-time who played Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey — has been cast to play Charles Dickens in a new movie to be titled The Man Who Invented Christmas. This is a project both to greatly anticipate and to loathe. The story of Dickens and his creation of A Christmas Carol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":15,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-24905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-movies","tag-charles-dickens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}