Sunday, December 16, 2012

Consider: A Christmas Carol


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.

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