^Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens - 200 years old, you would be
   today, if you had just changed your ways and listened to the
   Ghost of Christmas Future. Without you, we would have never had
   the hungry kid who dared ask for more ("Oliver Twist"). "Great
   Expectations", "The Old Curiousity Shop", "A Christmas Carol"
   (arguably one of the very early time travel stories) among many
   others. Oliver Twist's very dark humor also highlighted child
   labor laws at the time and that the new laws to aid the poor
   required them to wear prison style uniforms and go to
   workhouses.

   But story-wise, Fagin was probably the best character to hate.
   Slipping around in the dark, training kids in the fine art of
   pickpocketing and other crimes - he reminds me of a modern-day
   drug dealer in a poor neighborhood - getting kids to be his
   mules and distributors in exchange for drugs, beer and
   videogames - a truly wicked character in any society.

   Thanks Mr. Dickens - you knew how to make the goodest of good
   character and the evilest of evil - but you even taught a man
   (and all of us), the "true meaning of Christmas".^