In a world in which Christmas is widely celebrated as the most wonderful time of the year, the new movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, out Wednesday, might seem to be pure fantasy. The story, which centers around the journey that led English author Charles Dickens to creating A Christmas Carol in 1843, starts in a world in which Christmas is hardly a worthy subject for a novel. The film explores how, following a series of flops, Dickens was ready to give up his career as a writer when inspiration struck him in the form of a Christmas tale — and how he inadvertently ended up changing the way Britain celebrated the festival forever.