The annual holiday season is upon us in full force again,
and we are constantly bombarded by ads urging us to buy everything under the
sun. It doesn’t matter where you turn; they are everywhere. So many of us react
by being completely turned off by Christmas, and I admit I’ve been there too,
that it makes you wonder how Christmas manages to survive as a viable holiday,
let alone many people’s favorite. There has to be more to it than businesses
depending on it for most of their annual income, or parents wanting to give
stuff to their kids. There has to be something truly special about it, or we would
just all give up on it and walk away.
Perhaps a clue may be found in the many Christmas tales
entertaining us at this time of year. I have always found Charles Dickens’ story
of Ebenezer Scrooge to be quite interesting and one I can apply to my own life.
To his way of thinking, Scrooge is a paragon of his society: He is industrious,
clean living, and not wasteful. Money seems to be the one thing his society
values most, and in that pursuit he has excelled, amassing a rare fortune. He
is not a wastrel, nor does he burden society with his upkeep—indeed, there is nothing
he despises more than those who are and do. To others he is a mean man, and not
in the sense we think of the word today. He is mean, because he is “small,” and
not in the sense of stature. He is small-minded because he thinks of and
considers no one but himself. He has no sense of generosity and no intention of
it, and he truly cares for nobody—not even himself, if he ever took a good look.
That is what happens. He is given a revelation as to the true nature of his
life and how other people view him.
The lot of most people in England during that time was unenviable.
What we mostly see in the televised novels by Jane Austen is the life of
privilege enjoyed by the landed gentry written from their point of view (Pride and Prejudice, Emma). Leave it to
Dickens to show us the other side in such stories as Oliver Twist and Hard Times.
There was a huge gulf between the rich and the poor, and there were many more
of the poor. There was such a thing as debtor’s prison where you could be
locked up for the smallest crime with no hope of ever getting out. Factories
were horrific places of virtual slave labor, and then there were the
workhouses. People who owed Scrooge money shook in their boots when he walked
by, because they were well aware that he could have had any and all of them
packed off to debtor’s prison anytime he wished. They knew how much they owed
him, and it wasn’t just money, for which he also charged a hefty fee.
But Dickens’ Christmas
Carol is a story of transformation.
Scrooge comes to see the error of his ways, and the best part is that, as he
doles out toys and money to those around him, he becomes a happier man who finds
a place in the hearts of those same people. Scrooge finally recognizes that all
his money has not made him happy. Instead, his mean-spiritedness has cut him
off from the one thing that could make him happy: other people, and it is
bringing those people into his life and caring about them that transforms him,
not the decision to give away his fortune. You cannot buy love.
We all need other people, even loners like me, whose
families live far away, who have no children, and who have few friends. As the
poet John Donne so accurately put it, “No man is an island complete in
himself.” That is what makes
Christmastime so special, because it is this particular time of year that
forces each of us to confront our relationship with humanity head on; and we
must remember that Jesus commanded us to “Love one another.” He especially meant those among us who are not
so lovable and even our enemies, for as he said, there is no special virtue in
loving your friends—anyone can do that. If
Christmas is worth anything at all, it should be in its ability to heal our
hearts and the chasms between us by forcing us to look outside ourselves.
