CHRISTMAS BEFORE DICKENS.

Every year at Christmas-time, we are subjected to the usual articles and Web circulars explaining to us that Christmas had been utterly forgotten before Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843. Bah! Humbug. Dr. Boli remembers those delightful Christmases of the early nineteenth century. If the holiday had been forgotten, what possible motive could Dickens’ publisher have for issuing an expensive Christmas book with a color title page and frontispiece?

Here, therefore, are a few delightful Christmas books from the era before Dickens’ immortal work. Click on the title page to go straight to the book.