Ace Collins

I think Dickens, you can give him credit.

You know, he wrote that as a synopsis of what was going on with socially in England at the time with children being abused and working in the, there being this great divide between the rich and the poor.

And so it was a social book for him, a social commentary, if you will.

He wrote that book and tried to bring back some of the, the, I guess the fun of Christmas that existed in the 15 and 16 hundreds in England.

And it just so happened that that book came out about the same time that Queen Victoria married Prince Albert and he brought those Eastern European traditions to England as well.

So the marriage of those two things certainly did help in spreading the traditions of Christmas.

But I think that Dickens should get credit.

for something that we see every day, and that's Santa's on street corners raising money for Salvation Army or other organizations, the charity giving that takes place at Christmas.

I think Dickens with the Christmas Carol opened up the window to showing greater compassion and charity at Christmas than had before he had done that.

Because to a large degree, being poor was a tough, tough lot in England, particularly at that time,

And there was not much compassion from the other classes.

Dickens opened up the door for, in a modern term, I guess, some social justice.

Well, you can take it back to the Middle Ages.

It was the 1500s before they started hanging them upside down.

The Latvians were some of the first that did that.

And it moved from being what they called the creation tree, which was used in churches to represent the tree in the Garden of Eden, to being an actual Christmas tree, a Christmas celebration.

The greenery was brought in.

You know, they would clip the tree and then make wreaths.

And that's where the starting of making wreaths took place on doors is using the extra clippings.

Germany was very, very big in making the Christmas tree in the 15, 16, and 1700s, an integral part of the Christmas holidays, hence the song O Tonnenbahn.