Christmas, pre the Victorians, was about welcoming light into the home and desperately praying that things would start to grow again. These days, we have absolutely no idea how cold life was. Heating is better, clothing is better and the weather is better. Making is through the winter is expected, rather than a luck something to be hoped for and celebrated.
The industrial revolution changed that. It allowed people to think about Christmas in a different way. Many people had spare money and could focus on things other than their own survival. New workhouses were built to look after the poor, elderly and infirm. The people of our town were proud of ours, in writings, they boasted about how old men had their own room and freedom to go out, while still being cared for. Campaigners saw an opportunity to even out some of the inequity.
Charles Dickens, not only changed how we thought about workhouses but he also changed the Christmas story with his Christmas Carol. It’s a book I re-read every year but this year it has a resonance that is slightly uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because inequality is so obvious at the moment or because the people in power are showing absolutely no desire to change their ways.
The thought of not making it through the winter persisted through the Victorian era and Christmas cards show just how much they thought about it.
But Dickens gave us an enduring redemptive Christmas story; a tradition that’s continued. A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, even Home Alone all carry strong themes of redemption. Christmas is a time to say sorry and change your ways. Christians will ague that redemption is in the bible but I think it too Dickens to make it a Christmas theme.
Last Train to Christmas, on Sky, is supposed to be the new Christmas classic. However, I was really disappointed. It didn’t feel like a Christmas film at all. Martin Sheen is still a brilliant actor and the costume changes are amazing but it just didn’t have a good enough element of redemption. Going home or being home for Christmas is central to any Christmas story (echoing the bible) and this film did have that. He was on a train to Nottingham. Train nerds may be distracted by the countdown of the stations. However, it lacked a good redemption story.
On the journey, Martin Sheen’s character discovers he can time travel if he moves through the carriages. At the beginning he is a smarmy 80’s nightclub owner with a beautiful fiancé and a brother who is happy with his own wife and children. At the end of the train journey he is an old man with a gammy leg and a brother who has no relationship and is possibly dead from a drugs overdose, having been in prison several times. We are left with a vague feeling that the brother might have been ok with the final time travelling meddling but maybe not, maybe he just got his girlfriend back. And most bizarrely the reason for most of these changes happened not because Sheen’s character realised he was a bit of an idiot but because he was jealous that his brother got better Christmas presents from his aunt. This wasn’t a film about someone realising their actions were selfishly making other people’s lives harder. It was a film about selfishly changing time to make your own life better. A true Christmas film for our time.
I’m not saying we should go back to sending people dead birds as good luck charms but I can’t help thinking a little compassion and a touch less selfishness would go a long way.
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