I’ve spent a batch of happy hours this week reading Charles Dickens’ wonderful book, A Christmas Carol. Like many people, I’ve seen the play a few times, and the story itself is ubiquitous almost to the point of losing its punch. We all know about Scrooge and the three ghosts, and how the miser is transformed into a warm and joyful human being by book’s end.
But I’d never read the book, and that, as Frost says, has made all the difference. For one thing, after a forced encounter with Dickens in high school, I’ve hardly paid him any notice, and now I see that the loss is entirely my own! What a writer he is!
He has a marvelous sense of humor and sometimes seems to nearly wink from the page as here when he describes dead Marley’s face: “it had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” A bad lobster! Those words elicited from me a snort of pleasure!
Dickens’ imagination roams among many characters and places; he introduces us to thieves and miners, sailors and lighthousekeepers, country people and London merchants. He takes us far out to sea and underground, into the city slums and business quarter, into sitting rooms and counting houses. And most wonderfully, he tours the past, the present, and the future and carries us along for the ride.
And he’s not afraid of sentiment – OK, I can hear some of you thinking: I’ll say!. But overall, he strikes me as much like a great cook who aims for a perfect balance of flavors, and so some sentimentality is perfectly acceptable alongside the more piquant tastes he offers. It’s that bouqet garni that allows us all to come along with Scrooge on the journey he makes: without the blend of humor, sentiment, hope, and the acknowledgment of poverty and hardship, we would only observe Scrooge changing, rather than going along with him and changing ourselves.
That is what really struck me in reading A Christmas Carol. I am Scrooge. No, I am not as mean or miserly or cruel. But I have missed opportunities to show kindness, to be generous, to forebear offering an opinion and instead to uplift and encourage. When Scrooge sees the young Tiny Tim ailing in his chair by the fire and when the spirit tells him that this will likely be the little boy’s last Christmas, I felt such a pang of understanding. I, too, have seen suffering and turned away.
Sometimes it all seems too much to address in any meaningful way. Yes, we have limited resources of time and money, and the world cries out for help and healing. All the time. All the time.
But Dickens doesn’t bang us over the head with piety or tell us that we’ve got to give up everything we own in order to be spared from the fate the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge will be his own if he continues as an old skinflint. Just being a champion laugher – like Scrooge’s nephew of whom Dickens writes, “If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.” – seems to elevate a person. If you are prepared to smile and celebrate, you are lifted up, too. And if you are blessed with extra wealth and if you should spare some of it to help the poor, you will not die alone and unloved for you have “sent your spirit abroad” as Marley tells Scrooge we are meant to do in this life.
After his encounter with the three ghosts and the visions they show him, Scrooge learns how to send his spirit abroad into the world in a useful way. He gives a large sum to charity. He gives a raise to his clerk, Bob Cratchit. He sends a turkey to the Cratchit family and takes an interest in Tiny Tim that ultimately prolongs the boy’s life. But he doesn’t save the whole city. He can’t fix all the problems in London.
But he can do his best. He does what he can, and he does it with a joyful heart. He knows there is no time to lose and he throws himself into the business of being joyful and generous with his whole heart.
Having read this magical book, I am inclined to do the same.
Merry Christmas, friends! God bless us every one!
