DEVENTER (Netherlands), Dec 14 —“Merry Christmas,” bellowed a top hat and cape-clad gentleman in full Victorian garb, to the amusement of passers-by at a festival celebrating the work of Charles Dickens.

Yet the scene, which could have been plucked straight from the pages of one of the English literary titan’s much-beloved tomes, did not take place on the streets of London but in the Netherlands.

Since December 1991, the Dutch city of Deventer has held a two-day festival celebrating the author of such classics as Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities—and, of course, A Christmas Carol.

Dozens of carollers belted out Christmas tunes on each corner, while no fewer than 395 Dickensian characters, Oliver Twist included, roamed Deventer’s streets.

The festival was the brainchild of store owner Emmy Strik, who saw it as an opportunity to give free rein to her Anglophilia.

“She’s really a fan of England and Dickens,” Liesbeth Velders-Strik, Emmy’s daughter, who has taken over both the shop and the festival’s organisation in recent years, told AFP.

“And she said, ‘I want to have a Victorian Christmas’.”

Watch out for fires 

“Miss Havisham is at my parents’ house, you will see her in the window,” said Strik, referring to the eccentric doyenne from her favourite Dickens novel, Great Expectations, whose dress famously fire alight during the novel’s denouement.

“We have a lot of costumes that were from television series, so we don’t want fabrics that stay away from open fire, because that’s not Dickens,” the 57-year-old added.

Some visitors, like 20-year-old New Zealander Damien van den Berg, were bemused to have stumbled upon a Dickens festival in the Netherlands.

“When I first got here, I was a bit surprised with all the top hats and that. But I mean, it’s been really cool,” said the cricketer after emerging from a photo shoot with a group in full costume.

“I’ve never really had a Christmas like this. So it’s definitely something different. But yeah, it’s very random,” van den Berg added, as a herd of sheep brushed past his legs, while a group of slogan-chanting suffragettes came into view at the other end of the street.

Nearly 50,000 visitors are expected to brave the two-hour wait to enter the city centre across the weekend to attend the Dickens festival, which has cemented its place in Deventer’s folklore. — AFP