What Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ really means far exceeds what happens at yule time
What’s your favorite piece of Christmastime entertainment? I read recently that one television channel alone is offering 20 new Christmas shows this season. I wonder, is newer better? What about the classics? Do they still resonate in 2019?
Putting this question another way, what do we respond to at this time of year? Do we want entertainment, recipes or theology? For a long time I would have argued that top show award should go to Lillian Smith’s “A Memory of a Large Christmas,” a work which captures not only Smith’s radical (at the time) philosophy of equality for all but also paints a poignant picture of family life in the early 20th century South. Smith, writing in the 1950s, was far ahead of her time, but that in no way lessens the appeal of her description of old-time wood-stove cookery in “Christmas Kitchen Long Ago.”
Another holiday favorite, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” is also rich in allusions to the feasts of the season. I have no doubt that I am not the only person who has prepared a Christmas goose under the influence of Dickens, but references to boiling up a “Christmas pudding” are not what puts Dickens’ tale of Victorian London at the top of my list of holiday favorites.
When we think of “A Christmas Carol” merely as the story of spectral visits to a crabby old miser, we are overlooking the singular event that sets in motion the moral transformation that follows. You’ll recall that the ghost of Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner, arrives at Scrooge’s lodgings shortly after the old miser has dismissed from his door a pair of men canvasing for charity. He has also scoffed at an invitation to Christmas dinner from his nephew, the son of the now-deceased sister who befriended the young Scrooge.
When Marley’s ghost arrives dragging a chain made of cash boxes, ledgers and other financial paraphernalia, he proclaims “I wear the chains I forged in life.” It occurs to me that technology may have changed but the human condition really hasn’t.
This realization came as I read a recent article about treatment programs for addictive disease. Among the components of the 12 step programs is the suggestion that the sufferer must, like Scrooge interacting with his three ghosts, face up to the wrongs that have been done. Redemption is difficult for those who are still tormented by the “chains” that they have forged in life.
Marley and his chains come to old Scrooge to tell him of three spirits who will visit him for the sake of his welfare and “reclamation.” Under the guidance of Christmas Past, Scrooge’s return visit to the scenes of his childhood reminds him of the painful loneliness that has morphed him into the embittered misanthrope that we meet at the outset. Ultimately, free from his chains, he learns that his recovery will stem from service to others,
Certainly, at this commercialized time of year, when “Gimme, gimme” is the constant refrain, I know more than a few members of the clergy who would rejoice to hear their flock quoting Marley: “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”
What a concept. Dickens not only reminds us of the meaning of Christmas, he gives us a code to live by in the year ahead. Now that’s a gift that’s priceless.
Larry Fennelly is a local educator.