Charles Dickens and Christmas: It's actually complicated

One would be hard-pressed to find many people in the English-speaking world who didn’t at least have a passing familiarity with A Christmas Carol (even if it was simply because of the Disney adaptation).

But, as those familiar with Charles Dickens’s other works might have guessed, the author’s relationship with the holiday wasn’t a blissful, uncomplicated one.

Yes, he took joy in it — and in his Yuletide classic — but the darker sides of his childhood influenced some of that emotion.

The Guardian takes an in-depth look at what Christmas meant to Dickens here.