99% Invisible - 334- Christmas with The Allusionist

Episode Date: December 26, 2018

For the holidays this year, we're presenting a two-part Radiotopia feature with friend of the show (and host of The Allusionist podcast) Helen Zaltzman, each tackling a different aspect of this festive season. Subscribe to The Allusionist on Apple Podcasts and RadioPublic

This is 99% invisible. I am Roman Mars. Hello, you now boy! Me, sir! Yes, you're a good fella. A day is today. Today? What's Christmas Day, of course? Christmas Day.

No, you haven't missed it. It's Christmas Day and we're celebrating with two fun stories from the Illusionist, a show about language from Helen's Altman. The Illusionist is one of my all-time favorite podcasts, and I'm not just saying that because Helen'susionist is one of my all-time favorite podcasts, and I'm not just saying that because Helen's Altman is one of my all-time favorite people. It is a show about language, but it is absolutely not just for word nerds. It is 99PI-style storytelling using language as the lens to view culture rather than design.

And if you haven't discovered it yet, you are going to love it. With two festive seasonal favorites from the Ill illusionist, here's Helen's ultimate. The War on Christmas. When did that start? Upon the birth of Jesus Christ himself, when King Herod ordered all the baby boys in and around Bethlehem be killed? In 1644, when Oliver Cromwell's Puritans passed an ordinance prohibiting Christmas celebrations in England.

In 1659, when the Massachusetts Bay colony Puritans managed an ordinance prohibiting Christmas celebrations in England. In 1659, when the Massachusetts Baycolonine Puritans managed to get Christmas Bound for 22 years for being a pagan festival, or was it in 1998 in Britain's second largest city, Birmingham? If you picked up practically any newspaper at the time, you would have read the Birmingham City Council had renamed Christmas, Winterville. Birmingham will celebrate the festive season as usual this year with Carol singing fairy lights and street entertainment, but don't call it Christmas, council officials have renamed it Winterville, in the hope of creating a more multicultural atmosphere

in keeping with the city's mix of ethnic groups. A politically correct decision to call Christmas festivities, Winterval, Council Christmas, call it Winterval. Birmingham Council, claiming it was anxious not to offend those in other faiths, renamed Christmas Winterval. A political correctness gone mad. Crazy Council Chiefs provoked outrage last night after naming Christmas festivities Winterval,

political correctness gone mad. Political correctness Winterville, political correctness gone mad. Political correctness gone mad. Churchmen believe the Winterville name is intended to avoid offending Muslims and other minorities. Political correctness gone mad. A municipal brainwave called Winterville, renaming the annual holiday and likening it to shopping rather than shepherd's.

Political correctness gone mad. The word Winterville has a nasty echo of communists who banned any Christian connotation in East Germany. And verily in Britain Christmas was banished. Now we sing Winterville carols and wear ironic Winterville sweaters. We hang up our Winterville stockings for farther Winterville to fill with Winterval gifts. And when we turn on the radio, we rock around the Winterval tree to these festive tunes. It will be lonely this winterval.

With our children to home. Winterval Winterval Winterval Winterval Winterval Winterval. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Well, it's about as true as most things that have been said about Winterval, which came about thanks to one Mike Chubb. Hi, my name is Mike Chubb. You could say that I was the one that has caused a few worries. That is wonderful. In the late 1990s, Mike Chubb was the head of events for Birmingham City Council. From our point of view, from my self,

I said the manager of this huge event section in Birmingham City Council, and my team of some like 30, we came up with the terminology, Winterville. It's like a port, a portmanteur word for winter and festival. I thought it was a portmanteur of winter and interval, I must say, to sort of suggest this hiatus in the year. No, it's between winter and festival. I think it's a good portmanteau, it's quite elegant. Until it became shorthand for war on Christmas with a side of political correctness gone mad, it started well enough, with Birmingham's first winter ball in 1997.

Events ran over several weeks and were attended by hundreds of thousands of people without complaints from the press or the populace. So it's not clear why the following years Winterval became a wincident. But it did. In November 1998, the then Bishop of Birmingham, Mark Santa, known as Inclaus, issued his Christmas message to the clergy of the diocese. It said, I wonder what madness is in store for us thise. It said, the papers got hold of it. On 8th November 1998, the Birmingham Sunday Mercury reported that the Bishop of Birmingham had condemned the City Council's attempt to rebrand Christmas. What happened then was of course all those papers. They said, this is a good way. Not much news at Christmas, is that let's use an interesting

story. Did you know Birmingham City Council of Council Christmas or the named Christmas Winter World? Thereafter it went mentioned riding worldwide. Pretty much the only person who didn't notice was Mike Chubb. I was so busy at the time. I didn't take any of the media for your ory at the time. It just didn't touch me at all because I literally were working 41 days nonstop. They are nights. Busy work waging the war on Christmas,

except that wasn't really what Mike and the council were doing during the war on Christmas. In this war, only one side turned up to the battlefield. It was the media, really, that actually took it on. People like the Daily Mail, just gone to Google and Google Winterble and just look at the organisations who are up in arms about it. They're up in arms because they've been led to believe that that's what Bury and City Council have intended. It wasn't? No. Business we've never off the page. It was part of a 41 day, if it was like a festival of events.

But people thought you were trying to rebrand Christmas? Yes. They said it's political correctness gone mad. But actually political correctness had not gone mad. Political correctness had not even been a factor. Because the Council's events team was not trying to re-brand Christmas, it was trying to bundle together a whole lot of events occurring in the weeks before and after Christmas. Birmingham is Britain's second largest city with a very culturally and ethnically diverse population. There's a lot of stuff going on, particularly at that

time of year, hence they decided to use the marketing banner, Winterball. You see, like it does what it says on the turn. It markets a major festival at a time of the year called Winter. And there are sorts of things that happen in Winter. You know, it's a devoid of events in Winter, BBC children need, happens in Winter. You know, Chinese New Year happens in Winter, New Year's Eve happens in winter. Hanukkah, Eid, O and Christmas.

Christmas lights, Christmas market, Christmas trees, Christmas carols. It was still called Christmas. You know, that particular event which included the Christmas lights switch on, was about a month for the events of a Christmas. That came under Christmas. It was turned Christmas. It had its own brochure Christmas. But unfortunately people decided not to see that. They decided that that's what the council did. Shortly after the war on Winterville erupted in the papers,

the council actually issued a statement that they were not renaming Christmas and Christmas was very visibly a major part of the Winterville lineup. But which story sticks more? The true one that Winterville was a marketing and admin umbrella or the lie that Winterville had come to kill Christmas. Nobody actually could see the simplicity of the wind or brand, but the regimen to what they wanted, to give advice to their own aspirations and prejudices. Now, personally, I've noticed significantly more uproar about the war on Christmas than actual evidence that that war is being waged. Some people seem very eager for there to be a war on Christmas, so they can leap to Christmas's defence. Though Christmas has achieved cultural dominance way beyond religious lines, to cast it as an underdog, provides a cover for taking up other cultures, and to create and maintain

divisions in society. But Christmas is a pagan Roman Christian festival, celebrated by people from all sorts of cultures with all sorts of beliefs, including me, an ethnically Jewish atheist. Christmas is not threatened by multiculturalism. It is multicultural. People don't like change. They're scared of change. And to a certain extent, Winterhall was used as an example of a change that's gone too far because they misread what the organizers are trying to do. And they continued to misread it. After 1998, Birmingham didn't run Winterville again, but in the following years the Winterville myth was repeated dozens of times in Britain's national newspapers.

In fact, in 2011, after running another such piece, the Daily Mail had to print a retraction saying that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas. But, too little too late, Winterval had already become the byword for political correctness gone mad. And it still continues. Just a few weeks ago, in the British Parliament, Shaleish Farah, the Conservative MP for Northwest Cambridge, told Prime Minister Theresa May. But minority communities should respect the views and traditions of mainstream Britain. And that means Christmas is not winterble, and Christmas trees are not festive trees. I do agree with my own old friend. Well we can all agree with him that Christmas is not winterble since it never was winterble.

It's so simple, it's not difficult, it's just certain people just decide to say what they want to say, maybe they want to create a bit of a stir, because it sells papers. But in a way, as a marketing story, it is very successful because the brand really clung on if you just called it, I don't know, Birmingham winter holidays, no one would. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. It's just unfortunate that the brand had been so misinterpreted. That's right, that's right. If you had your time again, would you do it differently?

Yeah. Good for you. People have got to experiment, they've got to introduce and the public need to be introduced to new, exciting initiatives. Because otherwise we're just going to live in a very dull society. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna go buy that prize turkey in the window and settle in for another story from the illusionist featuring a couple of familiar 99PI voices after this. Here again is the illusionist, not 99% invisible. So we're in the parking lot of Cow Palace. There's a gun show happening at the same time.

Yeah, it says welcome patriots. We are here for the Dickensfest. Excuse me. Katie Mingle and Avery Trouffleman of 99% invisible are about to enter Victorian London. In the Cal Palace arena in Daily City, just south of San Francisco, California. It's also like 60-ish degrees. It feels not Christmasy at all. The great Dickens Christmas Fair entrance. It's a giant portrait of Santa Claus as you walk in. The Dickens Christmas Fair has been an annual event in the Bay Area since 1970,

founded by husband and wife team Ron and Phyllis Paterson, who previously had started the Renaissance fairs in the backyard of their home in Los Angeles. Their kids are on the Dickens Fair now. It's held on five weekends prior to Christmas and is 120,000 square feet of Victorian London festivity. Wow! They are all my goodness! Wow! They did a really good job!

Okay, so it smells like apple cider or something. Spiced spicy. It's sort of set up to look like an old English like like a market or like I don't know what would you say. Yeah, they're like storefronts and right here there's a big old-timey sign that says champagne and they're like bar mids serving champagne. And there's a lot of the British, oh my god, hell in there, British flags everywhere. All along the ceiling. It looks like a film set of a street. The streets are named things like

Nickelbee Road, Cratchits Yard, Pickwick Place, Fesiewigs Dance Party. We do have a map. Can't paint a map. So we're on Nickelbee Road right now. By Charles Dickens' house. The streets are thronging with people in different interpretations of Dickensian costume. Not compulsory for attendees, but encouraged. Oh yeah, that baby is like wrapped in a potato sack. That man actually took his baby, put their nonex face wrapped in a potato sack and brought him to the Dickens man. The Dickens Fairs London is also inhabited by scores of volunteers in well-research period

costumes. Before the event, they've been taught relevant history, given vocabulary guidelines and chosen names from a selection of approved Dickensian names. Oh, sorry, do you want to tell us your names? Oh, yeah. Or Tens, Snevalecki. The theatrical family, Snevalecki's. Oh, and there were English accents,

which I thought were right. You go straight down and say, yeah, hit the docks. And if you go any further, you're gonna hit the Thames. You don't want to hit the Thames. And there's a Thames here. Well, of course there's a Thames.

We're in London, you silly fool. Please, please, please, he's from any light. I don't know, but they're giving me that look that says, ooh oh you've been having a little too much of Lord and no maven, June this day. Lord Anum was not a controlled substance in 19th century Britain, but it is now, so the Dickensphere doesn't sell it, but there are lots of places to buy tea and ale. There are performance stages, a fencing academy, shops, lots of shops. Draw the news, fine hats and bonnets.

I've been wanting a bonnet. Really? No. Shop selling Victorianas such as corsets, jewelry, pies, and ones. Hang on, ones. Right, okay, well I don't really know where that's come from. Historian Greg Jenner has visited the illusionist before. In the episode Xmas Man he talked about the history of Santa Claus and Victorian Christmas cards with dead mice and bacon on them.

Greg knows a lot about history and a lot about the history of Christmas. So I'll send to check a few things at the Dickensware to see whether or not they are Dickensian. I don't think magic ones particularly Dickensian, but I may be wrong on that. They're $15 each. Yeah, I guess that's just Harry Potter rolling over into some other season, isn't it? We've got a lot of ones left. What else is British? Dickens that'll do.

Or perhaps someone just mixed up their David Copperfields. There's a lot of commitment here. It's just interesting to see this many people go there, you know, like playing make-believe mixed up their David Copperfields. Yes, Top Hat Snow Problem at all. I mean, this is obviously the era of both Dickens and Abe Lincoln, both of whom were Top hat-efficient Ardors. Happy Christmas! Hey, why does no one say Merry Christmas? That's an American sort of thing.

Only happy Christmas. Great, happy Christmas to Kenjian, Merry Christmas, non-Dekensian. Seasons greetings were very varied in Victorian times. It's Merry Christmas and happy Christmas and season greetings and happy Yuletide and biblical quotations and lines from carols. So frankly there's no real wrong way to say happy Christmas or Merry Christmas in a Victorian fair other than saying cowabunga Christmas which would be obviously completely inappropriate. Are there particular words or phrases that are like,

I'm trying to keep you useful to stay in that art that you learned? Bollocks is wonderful. Like that was Bollocks! There's one guy, the Bollocks, not Bollocks guy. You know, he has a sign that says you're either Bollocks or you're not Bollocks. And then he, people walk by like, you're a Bollocks. He's like, I walked by and he said you're Bollocks when the baby's not Bollocks. Greg, the word Bollocks? Well, I mean, that's a good old English swear word. I don't know if the top of my head if Dickens ever used it in his novels, perhaps he did.

But, I mean, it's got a long history. It goes all the way back to Anglo-Saxon English barks. So, if your festival is all about sort of quaint British-ness, then bollocks is our standard go-to English insult. It's our quaintest swear. I think so, isn't it? There's this one alley where everyone was dressed up as like a beggar or a prostitute or I guess a,

what is it? The artful dodger is a pickpocket. Yeah, and pickpockets, and chimney sweeps. Like, there are a lot of people who have faked mud on their faces here. Which is kind of a weird thing, they're like dressed up as a porpoise. It wouldn't be my chosen form of escapism on the weekend, sure. But... Being rich is expensive and hard, and you have to do boring things.

And when you're a scam, you get to gamble and gamble and drink and scream a lot and it's really fun. But I think we completely underestimate the terrifying daily stresses and strains of not having enough food, of having sexual violence if you're a woman who was a sex worker, of the diseases, you diseases, the infant mortality rates, the fact that children are working in factories and now pickpocketing on the streets, the lack of educational reform, there is an enormous canvas of sadness, of human sadness, which Dickens picks up on,

but there's a strange romance to it, which we seem to revel in. And I don't quite know why that is. Yeah, what was the life expectancy? Oh, incredibly poor, really poor. The average life expectancy in 1820 was perhaps something like 40 years old, and now we're closer to 80. The fact of a course that's contributing to that is massive infant mortality rates. You have a really high chance of having at least two children die on you if you have a family of six or seven kids. Women would frequently

have very serious illnesses in childbirth. More often than not, the thing that would kill a woman would be complications from childbirth. For men, of course, you have the military service being particularly dangerous in the age of the British Empire, which is off traveling the world and conquering things in a ruthless fashion. But also, of course, you have terrible diseases and no understanding of germ theory until the 1850s and 60s. So there are horrible cholera outbreaks that people don't understand. What spreads cholera, there is scurvy, there is dysentery, there is typhoid, just terrible deprivation, that people are able to feed themselves, unable to have healthy diets, there is chalk in the bread, you know, it's this is a period of

history where you can die of an ear infection or you can die of a scratch on your wrist, anything can get infected. So, it's really not a very nice time to be living if you don't have quite a lot of money. And even if you do have money, you might still die young. As happened to several of Dickens' closest relatives. Okay, let's go see if we can peek in. We're getting close to the house of Charles Dickens where

he's writing, you can see in the window how he's writing. Goodness. What is he writing? Could be one of his 20 novels and novellas, dozens of short stories, articles and plays. But given the environment, there's quite a high possibility that he's writing something about Christmas. A Christmas Carol wasn't his first Christmas story, but it was such a hit that like Mariah Carey re-releasing all I want for Christmas is you each year afterwards there was pressure for Dickens to keep supplying festive material. His other Christmas stories, the chimes, the cricket on the

half, the battle of life, the haunted man and the Half, the Battle of Life, the Haunted Man and the Ghosts Bargain. He also writes in Household Worlds, which is his sort of magazine. He'd be working on stories for the Christmas edition of the magazine from July of each year. There's the Christmas tree, a Christmas dinner. There's a very sad essay written in 1851, the year in which four of his family members die, called What Christmas Is as We Grow Older, which is a kind of tribute to them, but also a calling out in defense of Christmas and saying Christmas is about looking forward and hoping for a better future while at the same time remembering those who've gone before.

So he returns to Christmas many times in his career and indeed a great expectation starts with a Christmas scene, but none of those matched the success of a Christmas Carol. A Christmas Carol is by far and away his best, his most defiantly popular and most influential Christmas story. How many other books have been adapted hundreds of times for film and TV? The popularity of a Christmas Carol has never waned. It was an absolute smash hit straight away. It was published on 19 December 1843,

and by Christmas Eve it was already sold out. The next year the book was adapted several times for stage and reprinted and reprinted. It has never been out of print. Dickens did public readings of the book was adopted several times for stage and reprinted and reprinted. It has never been out of print. Dickens did public readings of the book in Britain and the US until his death in 1870. And beyond? Yeah, we're at Charles Dickens' house and where he will be doing a reading. But this is a very elaborate house. It's like completely set up like a full interior.

And there's like a swimming couch and a fireplace and a bookshelf. Chachkis all over the place, pictures on the wall, rugs, full nine yards. This exterior is painted like stone. So Charles Dickens wearing a long black coat is standing at a rib podium, reading dramatically, from a Christmas Carol, to a crowd that has gathered and costumed a non-costumed people sitting in his house. He's very enthused, he's like going beyond the podium. He's leaning into the audience, he's using his hands,

he's just accumulating. He's rude, said it with an harness, and he's not in a mistake. He clapped him on the back. I'm married, Christmas ball, and Mary, I'm Michael Federer. Then I'd give him you any money. What do you know about Charles Dickens, Katie Mingle?

So little. I was in a production of Oliver once. But Dickens is one of those authors whose work you kind of know without even having read it. Some authors work sticks so much in cultural consciousness, their name becomes an adjective, Kafkaesque or Wellian, Dickensian. Well Dickensian is a very, very broad idea. There's an incredibly vast canvas of what we think of as Dickensian. And even though we use it as a word, that word itself has so many different interpretations

and meanings. Men with muffin chop sideburns and stovepipe hats, women with hearts of gold and tragically short lives, orphans fending for themselves while menacing adults lurk around every corner, please, Sarah, I want some more! And Christmas, many Christmas! Christmas goose, Christmas ghosts! God bless us, everyone! Dickensian is quite a tricky word, actually,

and I think we don't always necessarily know what we mean when we say it. As a word, it kind of conjures up poverty, perhaps, a sense of squalor, a sense of people trapped in this sort of brutal society where there is no safety net, there is no full-back plan where children and young women can suddenly be cast into a life of poverty or crime or violence. But Dickens, you know, also really should sum up some of the beautiful things, some of the wonderful things he harnesses, you know, when we look at a Christmas Carol, the way he depicts the street scenes and

the sort of children and people singing and saying hello to each other, the sense of community, the shop windows filled to the brim with delicious goods and treats to eat on Christmas day and toys in the window. You know, this is also a bountiful visual iconography. Dickens conjured up both quite alarming and also quite enrapturing and trancing visions of what a city and a community could be. So Dickensian tends to be quite negative but it really should, I suppose, apply to all of the different worlds that Dickens created. And some of those were rather pleasant and lovely, and some of those were rather cruel and dark. Yeah, like what's the deal with Christmas?

Against? Yeah. A lot of authors have written about Christmas, but don't have festive fares devoted to them. Why does Dickens get to be the adjective? Why has he given credit for Christmas? You know, one of the things people often say is Dickens invented Christmas, which is absolute nonsense, of course he didn't. A child's Dickens' Christmas is not brand new in 1843.

He perpetuated some traditions. He reinvigorated others. There had been Christmas for centuries. There had been traditions that he had grown up with as a child. That he perpetuated and shared in his books. Singing, feasting, charitable donations. That's all medieval, chewed, stewed, georgian, whatever you want to call it. So Dickens is not the architect. He's a cheerleader.

Very different professions. Well, maybe, maybe so. I mean, they both build large structures don't they? A Christmas Carol landed at a time when there was a trend for nostalgia. The 19th century is an era where you have many folklorists and antiquarians taking an interest in the old ways. There is definitely in the 19th century this idea of a mythologised past of the Tudor era being the sort of housey on days. Just as we have the Dickensian festivals in San Francisco and we look back to the Victorians, the Victorians looked back to the Saxons and the Normans and the Tudors as a kind of glory days of simplicity where the good old

days of Christmas were much more pleasant. Because in some ways the Victorian Christmas is a reaction to industrialisation, the trauma of enormous economic thrust of people moving from the countryside into the cities, of communities being broken up, of dark satanic meals, of factories, of trains and industry, of the British Empire expanding and people being separated by huge geographical distances. Not only that, a Christmas Carol was riding a wave of renewed interest in Christmas, so along with the revival of older festive customs, there were new ones emerging that decade too.

Christmas cards were suddenly logistically viable, with the invention of the penny post in 1840. Christmas trees also became popular around then. King George III's German wife had introduced them to Britain in the late 1700s, so they weren't completely new, but they were newly fashionable when, in 1848, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children posed in front of theirs for the illustrated London news. And like when whatever Cape Middleton wears sells out, Christmas trees became all the rage. So quite a lot of traditions, what we think of as traditions now, that we assume a Dakenzian, they're not Dakenzian,

they just arrive at exactly the same time through pure coincidence. And it's all mushed together. And this Victorian festival suddenly feels like it's this brand new thing, but it's not. It's a continuity with some extra additional elements and the capitalism ramps it all up. Christmas is a commercial economy without parallel. It's incredibly capitalistic. It had been for a while, but in the 19th century it becomes more so. And you see the emergence of Christmas magazines, Christmas books, Christmas toys for children, which is a new market that's just sort of opening up. But Dickens' main intention wasn't to cash in on Christmas.

I mean, he did need the money. Though he had had considerable literary success the previous decade, lately the serialization of his novel Martin Chuzzlewitt hadn't been too popular and his income was looking dicey, plus he had a growing family to support and was often bailing out his parents and siblings too. And Dickens did sincerely love Christmas, his children wrote about the relish with which their father approached the festivities each year, but that wasn't the primary motivation either. Instead, his heartwarming Christmas fable was the cover story for a political mission. He was a man who had a tremendous political appetite and who was of the middle classes and, of course, befriended the upper classes, but was always on the side of the working classes.

And this, of course, was largely because he'd experienced poverty as a child. Dickens was the second of eight children in a pretty close family and had what he considered to be an adilic childhood until he was aged 11, whereupon his father, who regularly had financial problems, was sent to prison for debt. And as was custom at the time,

Dickens' mother and younger siblings moved in there with him. For a year, Charles Dickens lived alone. He had to quit school and worked 10 our days, six days a week at a boot-blocking factory. Though the family did reunite, the experience stayed with Dickens, informing much of his work and political attitudes. He is a man who's always championing those who've had a less fortunate life.

He campaigned against public executions, he thought they were vile and grim. You know, he campaigned for women, he campaigned for better schooling for children. He's a man who uses his voice as a campaigning tool. Though in the Victorian area, Britannia rolled the waves, colored the globe pink, et cetera. At home, many people were destitute. Industrial revolution had ushered in such huge societal

and economic changes that century, but welfare and health services had not been instituted yet. And Dickens was horrified by the poverty so many people were stricken by in 1843, particularly the conditions children were living in, on the streets, in schools for the impoverished, working down mines or in factories as he had done himself, and he was desperate to make a palpable difference. As a journalist, he planned to write a political pamphlet about it, entitled, An Appeal to the People of England for the Benefit of the Poor Man's Child, but he realised that not many people would read a political pamphlet.

They would, however, read his fiction. And as a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, Dickens coated his plea for social justice with a feel good Christmas ghost story. And so Dickens, you know, later on would write many, many journalistic pieces and editorials and he would use his power as a journalist and an essayist, but with a Christmas Carol, he's using his power as a sentimental novelist to move people to action, to inspire them, to be better Christians, to be better British people, to be better neighbors, family members, lovers, friends,

co-workers, colleagues, et cetera. It's a book about charity, and it's a book about community, and about what happens when the ravages of capitalism erode the human spirit and they corrupt the heart of Scrooge? You know, he was a man who once felt, who once cared, who once loved, and ultimately over the years he's been sort of gradually worn down by this Victorian urge to make profit, you know, economy, industrial progress, moving forward, and he's lost his humanity to the point that his own family, you know, don't really want to hang out with him, they don't really know him.

He's lost all of his empathy for his fellow man. So a Christmas Carol is an allegory, a very Christian allegory, a deeply spiritual book about a man who has become lost finding his way back to his humanity. And Dickens' mission did succeed. Somewhat, the book was credited with causing a rise in charitable giving and greater generosity to your fellow humans and employees at Christmas. But it couldn't totally transform society. Literature can move us, but ultimately,

structural systems are very hard to shift. And the Victorian period had many, many years of moving forward and very small steps being taken with children's rights or educational reforms and so on. But the rights of women in particular. The Christmas aspect may have overwhelmed the political message. Though the sentiment to be kind to fellow humans hasn't been lost, it's there in all the screen adaptations, even the ones riffing on the story, like scrooge, or running a little

further away with the inspiration, like Bad Santa. But I tell you what, I reread it this week and the original still works a treat. Because it's a really readable book. The characters leap off the page and it's really moving and inspiring and you desperately hope that Scrooge stays reformed. It's really funny as well. I think one of the disadvantages to the word de Kenzian is that it makes his work sound like it's going to be stodgy as a Christmas pudding boiled for eight hours, but it's not a cozy period piece. His book is a reaction to the economic situation in the 1840s, so his book is deeply modern and yet his outlook, his attitudes, his sense of nostalgia and whimsy is of course in many ways deeply traditional.

So he is bringing a kind of fusion between hyper-modernity and old-fashioned, old-timey, lovely nostalgia, days of your. And when we look back at Dickens, we do the same. The Illusionist is produced by Helen Zoltzman with music and production by Martin Ostwick. It is a member of Radio Topia and you should subscribe to it immediately and thank me for the suggestion, while the link on the website and in the show notes. 99% invisible as a project of 91.7KALW in San Francisco with produced on Radio Row in

beautiful downtown Oakland, California. We are proud member of Radio Topia from PRX, a collection of fiercely independent and fascinating podcasts. Find them all at radioiotopia.fm. We had a really good year of shows, and I hope you heard them all, but if you didn't, you can subscribe and listen to them all at 99pi.org. Radio TV from PRX.