<a href="http://judythewriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Christmas5.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-7249" src="http://judythewriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Christmas5-236x300.jpg" alt="christmas5" width="236" height="300" /></a>Today’s words of wisdom come from the novella Charles Dickens wrote in December 1843.

Dickens also published two other Christmas stories, but <em><a href="http://www.charlesdickenspage.com/carol.html">A Christmas Carol</a></em> was by far the most popular having never been out of print and adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and other media.

Dickens divided his novella into five chapters, labeled “staves” or song stanzas or verses, in keeping with the title of the book. The tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s strange night visitors continues to send a message that cuts through materialistic trappings of the season and straight into the heart and soul of the holiday.

Dickens described Christmas as <em>“a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”</em>

This description became known as the <a href="http://www.charlesdickenspage.com/christmas.html">“Carol Philosophy”</a> and Dickens strove to live accordingly for the rest of his life.

Wouldn't honoring Christmas by opening shut-hearts freely and thinking of others as fellow-passengers on the same journey, not another race of creatures, be an excellent way to end this holiday season and begin the new year?