How Marx and Engels spent their Christmas
Reading the fathers of communism’s letters from over a century-and-a-half ago, we find that far from being against festive fun, they were all feasting, drinking and giving presents, explains KEITH FLETT

MARX AND ENGELS were of course not religious, so their correspondence has no record of them visiting church at Christmas or marking the birth of the baby Jesus. However, they still marked the end of the year with a degree of secular celebration.
Their correspondence in the 1850s and ’60s often finds them wishing those they were writing to a happy new year without particular reference to Christmas itself. We find, for example, Marx writing to Wilhelm Liebknecht on January 7 1875 and wishing him a “Happy new year!’
The traditions of Christmas in Britain were to a considerable extent reinvented by Charles Dickens in his Christmas Carol published 180 years ago this December.
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