The Stream, 12.12.17
By Alan Dowd
Charles Dickens
published A Christmas Carol in 1843,
a week before Christmas. There are many, many versions of Dickens’s Christmas
classic. IMDB lists more than 110 movies and TV shows
based on the story. There’s a Flintstones adaptation, a Muppets version and
Bill Murray’s take in Scrooged. My
favorite is the 1984 film featuring the gruff, growling George C. Scott as
Ebenezer Scrooge. There’s even a story about Dickens’s most famous story: The Man Who Invented Christmas, which is
in theaters now.
Not only did Dickens change the English language
with A Christmas Carol—by the late
1800s “scrooge” became a synonym for any miserly person—he wrote a story about light and darkness,
giving and receiving, the here-and-now’s impact on the hereafter, salvation and
second chances. For those with eyes to see, Christ is present throughout what Dickens
called his “ghostly little book.”
Echoes and Shadows
“There is no doubt that Marley was dead,” Dickens begins. “This must
be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
to relate.”
Scrooge’s story of transformation and new life, like ours, oddly,
begins with certainty about someone’s death. Christ’s death is essential to
understanding His mission and our redemption—or else nothing wonderful can come
of the story. After all, it is not Christ’s birth—fantastic as it was—that gave
mankind a second chance at abundant life, but rather His death and what
happened three days later. Only if we grasp what He accomplished between Good
Friday and Easter Sunday does Christmas Morning have any real meaning.
“You will be haunted,” Marley warns, “by three spirits”: The
Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come.
In these three Christmas ghosts, there also are
allusions to the Father, Son and Spirit—to a God that transcends time, a God
that is the beginning and the end, a God that holds in His hands life and death,
a God that knows the appointed time of all men.
It’s worth noting that the first spirit brings “light
by
which all this was visible.” The second brings a “joyful
air.” The third is a “mysterious presence” that fills
Scrooge with “solemn dread.”
These are
reflections, shadows, of some of the ways God is described in scripture: God
brought light to the universe, Genesis tells us. His word is a light unto our
path, the psalmist explains. And God is light, John writes. His Spirit gives us
joy. Knowing Him brings us joy. Accepting Him in our hearts fills us with joy.
And yet, the Living God is so far above us, so holy and perfect, that He is mysterious.
Even Immanuel—“God with us,” divinity
wrapped in humanity—only adds to the awesome mystery of the Great I Am. And encountering
Him or His messengers can be downright dreadful, leaving some troubled and shaken, some confused or speechless or collapsed, others fearful or terrified, still others lame or mute or blind, some even dead—but always transformed by the One whose very name is “beyond understanding.”
The Heart of the Matter
Christmas is “the only time…when men and women seem by one
consent to open their shut-up hearts freely,” exults Scrooge’s nephew, Fred. Indeed, Fred persistently keeps
opening his heart and home to Scrooge, keeps inviting his uncle to be part of
his life, keeps showing love, keeps sharing Christmas—indeed Christ—with
Scrooge.
Fred is not the only one
who reflects Christ and
tries to share Christmas joy with Scrooge. His employee Bob Cratchit and his colleagues at the exchange
raising money for charity also show goodness and kindness.
Indeed, Scrooge is shown again and again that we are not
islands—that our actions and inaction, our words and silence, affect our neighbors.
After Scrooge remarks that Marley was an excellent businessman, Marley’s ghost
howls, “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business.”
Scrooge is consumed
by the worries, burdens and wealth of the world but somehow distant from the
world—at once worldly and yet oblivious to the needs of the world around him.
This sickness of
heart is not peculiar to 19th-century England, as we know. Nor is it something
that evolved in modern man. “The seed falling among the thorns,” Jesus
explained, “refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of
this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it
unfruitful.”
“Scrooge
equates happiness with wealth,” theologian Stephen Rost observes. “Ironically,
he is the most unhappy character.”
On the other hand, characters like Fezziwig (who mentored
Scrooge in his youth) and Cratchit are full of the joy that comes from treasuring what
matters—family and friends, life and love.
Not coincidentally, Dickens tells us Cratchit is church-going and God-fearing. He
prays and thanks God for his blessings. At one point, Cratchit recounts how his
crippled and dying son “hoped the people saw him in the church, because
he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas
Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” At another point, Cratchit’s older son reads from the Bible: “And He took a child,
and set him in the midst of them…”
Surrounded by his family—and little else in the
way of material comforts—Cratchit declares, “I am very happy.” Even amidst the
loss of his child, he repeats the words, this time with an exclamation, “I am
very happy!”
Only a man who holds Christ in his heart—only a man who knows
Christ holds his son—could say such a thing.
Transformed
Speaking of the heart, A Christmas Carolis the story of a heart transformed. The Ghost of Christmas Past tells Scrooge that his dreamtime
journey is all about “your reclamation.”
Confronted with the consequences of his
sinfulness, Scrooge is described as “holding up his hands in a last prayer to
have his fate reversed.”
“I am not the man I was,” Scrooge cries. “I will
not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.” Encountering the
Eternal—being confronted with our own broken mortality—has a way of softening
the heart.
“I
will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year,” the reborn
Scrooge promises. “I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future. The spirits
of all three shall strive within me…Heaven and the Christmastime be praised for
this! I say it on my knees.”
Reborn is an apt adjective for Scrooge. After his encounter with the
supernatural, this man who was once mean and cheerless, laden down with the
burdens of this world, is full of joy. “I am as light as a feather,” he cheers. “I am as
happy as an angel…as merry as a school-boy…as giddy as a drunken man.”
Dickens reports that on Christmas morning the new
Scrooge “went to church and walked about the streets.” He “patted children on
the head,” talked to beggars and “found that everything could yield him
pleasure.”
The new Scrooge is forgiving, shows mercy and offers grace. He
is generous—helping the Cratchits, tipping the poulterer, donating to charity and showing compassion
for Tiny Tim.
His transformation transforms those around him. With an echo of
the prodigal son’s return, Scrooge returns to his nephew and asks, “Will you let me in, Fred?” The
response is emphatic and immediate: “Let him in!” A “wonderful party” full of “wonderful happiness” ensues.
Cratchit is stunned by the new Scrooge: “He had a momentary idea of…calling
to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.” But by word and deed, Scrooge
convinces Cratchit that he is a new man. “I'll raise your salary,” he vows,
“and endeavor to assist your struggling family.”
“Scrooge was better than his word,” Dickens
reports. He “became as good a friend…as good a man as the good old city knew.”
Home
This is just a story, written by an imperfect man, with his own preconceptions
and issues. Dickens’s faith was
complicated, a byproduct of what Rost calls “a life of unpleasant experiences with formal
religion.” Yet he notes that six
years after A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord, reflecting
what his daughter called “deep devotion to Our Lord.” Dickens
himself said, “I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for
the life and lessons of Our Savior.”
Indeed, this story reflects deep
truths about a God of second chances, a God who commands us to help one
another, a God who will do anything to bring His children home.As G.K. Chesterton observed, “The
story sings from end to end like a happy man going home.”