Charles Dickens has a most amazing run in the history of Christmas. His greatest Christmas work, A Christmas Carol, has seen continuous play on stage, on film and in print since December 1843.

How many other literary works can you think of that has that kind of history, popularity and staying power? And that’s the thing: we see no end to his run.

Charles Dickens is as worthy of a candidate for the Christmas Hall of Fame as anyone.

~ The Beginnings of Charles Dickens ~

He was born at just the right time, in just the right place and his career followed an arc in the emergence of publishing technology that made it possible for Charles Dickens to become the first media superstar of worldwide acclaim.

Born in 1812 Dickens enjoyed a pleasant childhood before things took a devastating turn for his family: his father was cast into debtors prison. Young Charles and at least one of his siblings had to find employment in order to help the family survive. He began work at the tender age of 12 at the peak of work abuses to both adults and children at the beginning of the British industrial revolution.

His experiences between the ages of 12 and 20 would color the pages of his later written works. Just as he wrote in A Christmas Carol, the themes of ignorant, poverty, want and neglect were ones he would not shy away from.

Dickens had developed a love of theater, attending frequently and dabbling here and there in acting. He was well known among his friends and work associates as clever, funny and a great mimic.

These were passions he quite nearly pursued as a career. But along with his scholarly pursuits came a course in a system of shorthand that proved useful to journalists. He worked for a time as a political reporter then as a columnist and satirist penning a regular column detailing fictional story lines.

~ Dickens the Writer ~

This was where the writer in Dickens began to flourish and before long his works of fiction in England’s press began to develop a lucrative following. He began to publish and soon was one of England’s leading authors. He married and started a large family.

As he matured he naturally did battle with publishers, who he felt were taking more than their fair share of the profits. Some historians portray Dickens as nearly broke and desperate when he wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843. This is a distortion. While Dickens was at a career crossroads at about the age of 30 he was also in need of finding more profitable shares of his creations. Due to a dispute with a publisher, he decided to self-publish A Christmas Carol.

Self publishing didn’t pan out for the first edition of A Christmas Carol but it did in subsequent editions. In fact, it took Charles Dickens and his family to a whole new level financially and that changed both his outlook and his economic prospects.

A Christmas Carol made him permanently viable and made publishing everything else he would create in the future easier. Dickens went on to a successful and lucrative career as one of the biggest literary stars of the 19th century.

But it was A Christmas Carol that defined him both in his time and in ours. For the rest of his life he would tour frequently, “doing readings” of his work which meant acting out the characters in different voices and mimicking their behaviors. Here is one review of a performance of Charles Dickens performing A Christmas Carol:

By the time Dickens died in 1870 he was a superstar on both sides of the Atlantic. Christmas simply was not Christmas without Charles Dickens.

That is still true.

James Stewart is the only actor in the inaugural nominated class of the Christmas Hall of Fame. (Yes, Bing Crosby acted…but we know why he is really here).

Jimmy Stewart won’t be the only actor who makes the Hall of Fame.

But there is something appropriate about him being the first to be nominated. In our preliminary surveys for the Hall of Fame his name was the first mentioned of all actors associated with Christmas movies – by a wide, wide margin.

Why do people think of James Stewart and Christmas?

There are many reasons, the first of which is quite obvious: the most popular Christmas movie of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life.

~ James Stewart: Actor and Patriot ~

The story of that film is well known by Christmas fans.

Based on a short story by Phillip Van Doren Stern called The Greatest Gift the movie bounced around for a while between Hollywood studios before falling in the lap of Frank Capra.

Right after the war, Capra called Stewart and asked him to look at the lead part.  Stewart describes his conversation with Capra about it:

“Now, listen,” Frank began hesitantly. He seemed a little embarrassed about what he was going to say. “The story starts in heaven, and it’s sort of the Lord telling somebody to go down to earth because there’s a fellow who is in trouble, and this heavenly being goes to a small town, and…”

Frank swallowed and took a deep breath. “Well, what it boils down to is, this fellow who thnks he’s a failure in life jumps off a bridge. The Lord sends down an angel named Clarence, who hasen’t earned his wings yet, and Clarence jumps into the water to save the guy. But the angel can’t swim, so the guy has to save him, and then…”

Frank stopped and wiped his brow. “This doesn’t tell very well, does it?”

I jumped up. “Frank, if you want to do a picture about a guy who jumps off a bridge and an angel named Clarence who hasn’t won his wings yet coming down to save him, well, I’m your man!”

Of course, there’s a lot more to the story of this movie. But movie fans for generations came to love this film — and it eventually ranked as the #1 inspirational film of all time — because it played on television for decades every Christmas season.

For over 35 years Jimmy Stewart and George Bailey were as big a part of every Christmas as Santa Claus.

Stewart was no one-hit wonder however. He was THE leading man in Hollywood in the 1930s. Then he interrupted his soaring career and joined the Air Force during World War II — completely distinguishing himself in new ways.

Once the war was over, he picked up the pieces and returned to his film career, starting completely over. He went on to a storied career that was capped by a low-budget and at-first rarely seen made-for-television Christmas movie called Mr. Krueger’s Christmas.

~ James Stewart as Willie Krueger ~

This television movie was a simple story: Stewart played a lonely senior citizen janitor who is prone to falling into bits of remembering the past and fantasizing about a more meaningful present.

He’s lonely, missing his dead wife, and anxious to celebrate Christmas. A group of carolers come to his door one day and he responds enthusiastically, getting caught up in the music and fantasizing about being a part of it all.

This 30-minute film, made by an Academy award winning director, would like It’s a Wonderful Life find constant replay on television Christmas after Christmas for decades. It would make a new Christmas star of Jimmy Stewart, mostly because of his one-take scene as he approaches the Baby Jesus in the manger.

In all, Jimmy Stewart the actor and Jimmy Stewart the American are beloved to the Christmas-loving world because his messages of Christmas still resonate, now decades after he has passed on.