WHEN YOU THINK OF CHRISTMAS, you think of the Victorian era, and of Dickens. Only the most hard-hearted of skinflints could resist his evocation of the festive period, which has been emulated and ripped off ever since A Christmas Carol was first published.
As Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present wander the streets of London, the descriptions mirror what Dickens himself had seen on his wanderings about the city the previous year, albeit with a little creative exaggeration.
The author described the “brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed”, and called it “a glorious pageant, with
