It's hard to imagine a bleaker backdrop to the Christmas season than this set of cascading crises disrupting so many of our holiday traditions. Christmas, a potent blend of secular and religious traditions, has long been a tangle of contradictions and a repository for some of our deepest cultural concerns. That's been the case ever since the revival of Christmas in Victorian Britain in the mid-1800s. Before that, Christmas was more of a holy day than a holiday, a day when businesses remained open and celebrations centered around churches. The 1938 film adaption of "A Christmas Carol" starred Leo G. Carroll as Marley's Ghost, left, and Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Source: CNN December 11, 2020 19:52 UTC