In 1843 -London England, Christmas was a holiday barely celebrated. It all changed when a “down and out”, young writer by the name of John Huffam, after three failed books, found himself on the verge of bankruptcy.
Desperate and riddled with self-doubt he began walking the streets of London by night, drunk and beaten down by life, and it was in that terrible place of darkness, among the poor and down trodden, that he found humanity, and moreover, found his own humanity. It came in the form of three ghosts of inspiration, and with them a holiday story unlike any other.
His publishers, who had actually grown wealthy publishing his books prior to his three book failures, turned against him, refusing to consider an outlandish new book about Christmas, that included ghosts, and time travel, and the harshness of life for those less fortunate. “Christmas,” they told him, was at best a second-rate holiday that few, if any, really celebrated any more. And to them his book was the kind of drivel that no upstanding Englishman or woman, would read, much less buy. And so John Huffam, with less than three months before Christmas, no money to speak of, and his family facing the workhouse and he, himself, debtor’s prison, set out to publish the book himself.
He begged and borrowed, risking everything on the success of this one little book; a book that had not even been written yet, and an ending that would not come to him until the day before the book was scheduled to go to the printers. But it would be a book and an ending that would arguably change the world, and forever change the holiday we know as Christmas.
By all reckonings it was a true miracle. John Huffam did write his book and he did it in less than six weeks, and it was published just days before Christmas... and to the astonishment of all the publishers who had turned him down, by Christmas Eve, every copy (that supposedly no one would buy) had been sold, and John’s fortune and future restored.
And his book would go on, printing after printing, year after year, to become one of the world’s greatest literary accomplishments. And John Huffam would go on to work, and write, and become even more famous than he had been before, but now he had an undying desire to help others less fortunate (an inspiration given to him by three Christmas ghosts) and through his efforts John Huffam single-handedly brought social change to England...and the world.
And though you may not recognize John’s Huffam’s name (which are only his middle names), you may recognize his full name...Charles “John Huffam” Dickens...and the book he was told no one would buy was none other than..."A Christmas Carol".
Now, nearly two hundred years later, there are those who say Charles Dickens invented Christmas...but he didn’t. That gift of love was given to us all a long time ago. But he did find a way to show us the nobility and compassion that resides in each of us, if only we look for it; and how such inspiration can sometimes come from the humblest of places.
And so I say to you and yours this Holiday Season--In the words of Tiny Tim...“God Bless Us... Every One."
Merry Christmas!!