If you have any interest in Dickens, a very good column, as Dowd avoids her usual cranky glibness ...
AT the end of his life, Charles Dickens did not have great expectations for Christmas.
“The Inimitable,” as he had christened himself when he was young and celebrated, was drained from traveling to give paid readings and suffering from such severe gout that he could not write clearly or walk well. He was confined to bed all Christmas Day and through dinner, bleak in his house.
Literature’s answer to Santa Claus, as Robert Douglas-Fairhurst writes in “Becoming Dickens,” had always gravitated to the holiday.
hit the link for the whole column; it's not very long.
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