Most famous in the realm of holiday literature for his 1843 publication, `A Christmas Carol,` Charles Dickens was in fact a prolific writer in the yuletide genre and a great contributor to many now-prevalent traditions of the holiday itself. In 1944, `A Christmas Carol,` Dickens released `The Chimes: A Christmas Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In,` which combined his usual sympathy for the poor with the notion that we must always strive to live in nobler ways. In 1845 came the novella `The Cricket on the Hearth.` The years 1846 and 1848 respectively saw published `The Battle of Life` and `The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain.` Because of this wealth of Christmas-themed works, Dickens is sometime referred to as `the man who invented Christmas.`
