Meditations on A Christmas Carol
My only real ongoing Christmas tradition is watching Die Hard on Christmas Eve, but this year I decided that it's been too long since I've read Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and since I'm in a bit of Dickens mode anyway (having just read Great Expectations for the first time), I figured it would be worth reading it again.
Everyone raised in the Anglo-American tradition is familiar with the story; its characters and themes are not just iconic but archetypal in our culture. It is the shortest and simplest of Dickens' writings (at least among those I'm aware of), but presents the full Dickensian ethic in a powerful and accessible way. Any complete analysis of the book would be far longer and less interesting to read than the book itself, and would be pointless anyway because A Christmas Carol is most effective as a personal communication between its author and the reader, and anyone who wasn't reached by it wouldn't be interested in hearing more said about it. I only want to mention a few of the things that stuck out to me as I read it this time.
Ebenezer Scrooge is identified unambiguously at the beginning of the story as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" The term sinner is interesting here, because while it's obvious that Scrooge is a curmudgeonly old grouch, he's not what you'd really call actively evil. He doesn't kill anyone, doesn't steal, doesn't really go out of his way to hurt people. He's just solitary, greedy, and unpleasant. He's a lender of money who is merciless in recouping what he's owed, he's miserly and ungenerous, but what does he do that can really be described as sinful?
Perhaps its only me that typically envisions sin as more of a proactive, purposely immoral act, but I think that that is how most of us in the modern day would characterize it. Well, when we aren't glamorizing fairly mundane things as "sinful" for our own amusement, anyway. But that's another rant - the question is, what is sin, and how is Scrooge guilty of it? (those of you who feel compelled to answer "Sin is Jecht!" should probably discontinue reading at this point)
Although he provides us with assurances that Scrooge is avaricious, unkindly, and aloof, as a good novelist it's required of Dickens to show rather than merely tell, and the examples he gives us of Scrooge's sins are more enlightening than the mere assertion of them (actions speak louder than words). First, Scrooge's upbeat nephew drops in to the office for a visit, insisting that Scrooge come to Christmas dinner with his family. Scrooge sends him away with a "Bah! Humbug!" and even going so far as to insult his nephew marrying for love. Next, a couple of portly gentlemen arrive to ask for donations to help the poor. Scrooge replies that his taxes pay for prisons and workhouses to accommodate the poor, and when told that many would rather die than go to such places, he says, "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Next, a poor boy comes to his door to sing Christmas carols, and Scrooge chases him off. Finally, he expresses frustration at his clerk for expecting to have paid time off for Christmas Day.
Each of these incidents is addressed by the spirits who take Scrooge around during the night to show him the error of his ways. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows him his sister, "a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered", but who "had a large heart" and who loved and was loved by Scrooge in his youth. She has long since died, but not before giving birth to a son, the nephew who has carried on his mother's generous nature. This is confirmed by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows Scrooge that his nephew defends him to his family and refuses to ever give up on him, despite Scrooge's constantly bad attitude. Christmas Past shows Scrooge himself as a young and lonely boy, neglected by his father during the holidays, and Scrooge wishes he'd given something to the caroler. Scrooge also sees a scene from his apprenticeship, and the raucous parties his old boss Fezziwig used to throw at Christmas, and realizes he should be kinder to his own employee. Finally, Christmas Present shows him Tiny Tim, his clerk's sickly little boy, who will surely die without proper medical care, and the Spirit torments Scrooge with his own words: "If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Again, the question remains, in what sense were his original sentiments sin, and not just rude or impolitic? The best and most concise definition of sin I know of is James 4:17, "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." Each of Scrooge's encounters in the first chapter represent an opportunity to do good, which he spurns. By filling us in on Scrooge's past, the novel reveals that he does know better, because he has experienced hardship and heartbreak himself. If he were a totally callous and unfeeling sociopath, there would be no story, because then he wouldn't be capable of moral choices. Whether or not there is a hard-wired moral code shared by everyone is a different debate; here it suffices to say that (aside from mental disorders) every person has some moral compass, governed by some combination of inborn characteristics and acquired socialization. When a person knowingly fails to live up to their own moral judgment, they have sinned.
This concept of sin has many interesting intellectual consequences and is also easy to identify with in our daily lives. I doubt that there is anyone who isn't familiar with the feeling of letting themselves down. Most of the time these sins have only miniscule effect on the outside world, but what's important is their internal impact, the feelings of guilt, depression and even self-loathing they lead to. Thoughts like "I really should have called my mother today, but I didn't" or "I promised I'd quit smoking this year, but I haven't" are perfect examples of this - issues that are important because they are important to us, not to the world at large. The reason A Christmas Carol resonates so truthfully is that Scrooge isn't forced to change his ways by some outside threat of punishment or compulsion, but by his own feelings of remorse and penitence. He has relatively minor impact on other people - a point emphasized when he sees the general indifference with which news of his death is recieved around the town. His sins don't cause massive death and destruction, or bring about the end of the world - the worst they may do in an objective sense is that Tiny Tim will die young. But his sins wreak incredible destruction upon himself, a fact he only recognizes when confronted with them. By failing to do good, he has harmed himself far more than anyone else. He's missed his opportunity to have a family of his own, he's alone and unloved in his old age, and he will be unremembered and unmourned after his death. This is the real nature of sin - the punishment of oneself by oneself for failing to live up to one's own knowledge of good and evil.
Unfortunately, we humans are not allotted an infinite amount of time to identify and resolve our internal conflicts. A Christmas Carol deals extensively with the comparison of life versus death, and the roles both play in the problem of sin. The ghost of Scrooge's old business partner Marley appears to him wearing the "chain I forged in life", fetters composed of "of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." Marley's ghost explains, "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it." The chain symbolizes Marley's sins in life, and Scrooge understands that he has forged an even more ponderous chain for himself. Again, this illustrates the self-punishing nature of sin; Marley and the other ghosts like him are not being punished by an external tormentor, but by themselves.
Marley is described throughout the novel as being nearly identical to Scrooge; after he dies, Scrooge doesn't bother to take Marley's name off their business's sign, and answers to the name Marley if someone addresses him by it. Dickens wastes no opportunity to make clear that Marley and Scrooge are identical, so that when the ghost appears, the only difference between them is that one is alive and one is dead. This difference is emphasized by the interchangeability of the two men in life to focus the reader's attention on the primary difference between the living and the dead, which is that the living can still make choices - can still change. The dead are stuck exactly as they were in life - they do not and cannot change.
"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 9:4-6
Life is change, and death is stasis. In Great Expectations, the elderly Miss Havisham lives in a decaying, empty house into which the sun never shines. Every clock has been stopped at twenty minutes to nine. A wedding banquet has been laid out in the dining room for decades. She still wears the wedding dress she was putting on when the letter arrived to inform her that her groom would not be coming; she wears only one shoe because she had not yet put the other one on when the letter arrived. She uses her wealth and power to let her estate go to waste and to raise an adopted daughter for the sole purpose of enacting her revenge against all men. Mentally and morally, she remains frozen at one moment in time, the moment of her grief and anger at being abandoned at the altar. No one ever sees her eat or drink. She may be alive in the most technical sense, but she is a living corpse, illustrating the key difference between the living and the dead: the living can change, the dead do not.
Gandalf, describing the terrible effect of the Great Rings on mortals (and describing the doom of Smeagol/Gollum), says, 'A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness.' Sure enough, Gollum is described as thin and bony, indistinguishable from a child's skeleton when seen from the air. It is only when he loses the Ring does he show any potential for change.
"The dead know only one thing," says Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket, "that it is better to be alive."
Death is an impenetrable barrier. Perhaps there is something resembling life afterwards, and as Thomas Paine says, "I hope for happiness beyond this life." But whatever may lie beyond death, one thing seems clear: it is not life; once dead, we cannot improve for good or ill the state of our souls. We have only our lifetimes in which to affect the world. It is important to distinguish between Jacob Marley and Marley's Ghost. The apparition that appears to Scrooge is not the same as Marley the living man, it is only a remnant, a shade, a restless spirit doomed to feel remorse for sins it can no longer correct. Marley's Ghost shows Scrooge the many phantoms floating hopelessly through the air: "The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. "
The Ghost of Christmas Future, probably the most memorable of them all with its Grim Reaper-like appearance, shows Scrooge what will happen after he dies. Interestingly, it does not show him his future ghost walking around clad in heavy chains; the imagery of Marley's Ghost and its fetters is a conceit to illustrate the self-harm caused by accumulation of sin, rather than a literal demonstration of afterlife punishment. The real cost of sin is internal, and in the absence of knowledge of an afterlife, this punishment is best illustrated by the reactions of other people to Scrooge's death.
People he did business with in life mention his demise only in passing, showing no real emotion or interest beyond the disposition of his wealth. The maid who cleans his chambers steals the curtains off his bed with his corpse lying in it so that she can sell them to a pawn shop. A family that owes him money rejoices, for they figure that whoever takes over his accounts isn't likely to be worse than him. When Scrooge demands of the Spirit to show him someone feeling remorse, he sees Bob Crachit's family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. And of course, in one of the most famous scenes from the book, Scrooge sees his own lonely grave. He is not threatened with punishment after death; instead, he is shown that death is the end, and all that remains after his death is the other people in his life, the ones he can choose to help or not. No matter what he does, the same quiet grave awaits, and it's only while his life lasts that he can redeem himself.
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." -Ecclesiastes 9:10
Everyone raised in the Anglo-American tradition is familiar with the story; its characters and themes are not just iconic but archetypal in our culture. It is the shortest and simplest of Dickens' writings (at least among those I'm aware of), but presents the full Dickensian ethic in a powerful and accessible way. Any complete analysis of the book would be far longer and less interesting to read than the book itself, and would be pointless anyway because A Christmas Carol is most effective as a personal communication between its author and the reader, and anyone who wasn't reached by it wouldn't be interested in hearing more said about it. I only want to mention a few of the things that stuck out to me as I read it this time.
Ebenezer Scrooge is identified unambiguously at the beginning of the story as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" The term sinner is interesting here, because while it's obvious that Scrooge is a curmudgeonly old grouch, he's not what you'd really call actively evil. He doesn't kill anyone, doesn't steal, doesn't really go out of his way to hurt people. He's just solitary, greedy, and unpleasant. He's a lender of money who is merciless in recouping what he's owed, he's miserly and ungenerous, but what does he do that can really be described as sinful?
Perhaps its only me that typically envisions sin as more of a proactive, purposely immoral act, but I think that that is how most of us in the modern day would characterize it. Well, when we aren't glamorizing fairly mundane things as "sinful" for our own amusement, anyway. But that's another rant - the question is, what is sin, and how is Scrooge guilty of it? (those of you who feel compelled to answer "Sin is Jecht!" should probably discontinue reading at this point)
Although he provides us with assurances that Scrooge is avaricious, unkindly, and aloof, as a good novelist it's required of Dickens to show rather than merely tell, and the examples he gives us of Scrooge's sins are more enlightening than the mere assertion of them (actions speak louder than words). First, Scrooge's upbeat nephew drops in to the office for a visit, insisting that Scrooge come to Christmas dinner with his family. Scrooge sends him away with a "Bah! Humbug!" and even going so far as to insult his nephew marrying for love. Next, a couple of portly gentlemen arrive to ask for donations to help the poor. Scrooge replies that his taxes pay for prisons and workhouses to accommodate the poor, and when told that many would rather die than go to such places, he says, "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Next, a poor boy comes to his door to sing Christmas carols, and Scrooge chases him off. Finally, he expresses frustration at his clerk for expecting to have paid time off for Christmas Day.
Each of these incidents is addressed by the spirits who take Scrooge around during the night to show him the error of his ways. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows him his sister, "a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered", but who "had a large heart" and who loved and was loved by Scrooge in his youth. She has long since died, but not before giving birth to a son, the nephew who has carried on his mother's generous nature. This is confirmed by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows Scrooge that his nephew defends him to his family and refuses to ever give up on him, despite Scrooge's constantly bad attitude. Christmas Past shows Scrooge himself as a young and lonely boy, neglected by his father during the holidays, and Scrooge wishes he'd given something to the caroler. Scrooge also sees a scene from his apprenticeship, and the raucous parties his old boss Fezziwig used to throw at Christmas, and realizes he should be kinder to his own employee. Finally, Christmas Present shows him Tiny Tim, his clerk's sickly little boy, who will surely die without proper medical care, and the Spirit torments Scrooge with his own words: "If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Again, the question remains, in what sense were his original sentiments sin, and not just rude or impolitic? The best and most concise definition of sin I know of is James 4:17, "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." Each of Scrooge's encounters in the first chapter represent an opportunity to do good, which he spurns. By filling us in on Scrooge's past, the novel reveals that he does know better, because he has experienced hardship and heartbreak himself. If he were a totally callous and unfeeling sociopath, there would be no story, because then he wouldn't be capable of moral choices. Whether or not there is a hard-wired moral code shared by everyone is a different debate; here it suffices to say that (aside from mental disorders) every person has some moral compass, governed by some combination of inborn characteristics and acquired socialization. When a person knowingly fails to live up to their own moral judgment, they have sinned.
This concept of sin has many interesting intellectual consequences and is also easy to identify with in our daily lives. I doubt that there is anyone who isn't familiar with the feeling of letting themselves down. Most of the time these sins have only miniscule effect on the outside world, but what's important is their internal impact, the feelings of guilt, depression and even self-loathing they lead to. Thoughts like "I really should have called my mother today, but I didn't" or "I promised I'd quit smoking this year, but I haven't" are perfect examples of this - issues that are important because they are important to us, not to the world at large. The reason A Christmas Carol resonates so truthfully is that Scrooge isn't forced to change his ways by some outside threat of punishment or compulsion, but by his own feelings of remorse and penitence. He has relatively minor impact on other people - a point emphasized when he sees the general indifference with which news of his death is recieved around the town. His sins don't cause massive death and destruction, or bring about the end of the world - the worst they may do in an objective sense is that Tiny Tim will die young. But his sins wreak incredible destruction upon himself, a fact he only recognizes when confronted with them. By failing to do good, he has harmed himself far more than anyone else. He's missed his opportunity to have a family of his own, he's alone and unloved in his old age, and he will be unremembered and unmourned after his death. This is the real nature of sin - the punishment of oneself by oneself for failing to live up to one's own knowledge of good and evil.
Unfortunately, we humans are not allotted an infinite amount of time to identify and resolve our internal conflicts. A Christmas Carol deals extensively with the comparison of life versus death, and the roles both play in the problem of sin. The ghost of Scrooge's old business partner Marley appears to him wearing the "chain I forged in life", fetters composed of "of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." Marley's ghost explains, "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it." The chain symbolizes Marley's sins in life, and Scrooge understands that he has forged an even more ponderous chain for himself. Again, this illustrates the self-punishing nature of sin; Marley and the other ghosts like him are not being punished by an external tormentor, but by themselves.
Marley is described throughout the novel as being nearly identical to Scrooge; after he dies, Scrooge doesn't bother to take Marley's name off their business's sign, and answers to the name Marley if someone addresses him by it. Dickens wastes no opportunity to make clear that Marley and Scrooge are identical, so that when the ghost appears, the only difference between them is that one is alive and one is dead. This difference is emphasized by the interchangeability of the two men in life to focus the reader's attention on the primary difference between the living and the dead, which is that the living can still make choices - can still change. The dead are stuck exactly as they were in life - they do not and cannot change.
"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 9:4-6
Life is change, and death is stasis. In Great Expectations, the elderly Miss Havisham lives in a decaying, empty house into which the sun never shines. Every clock has been stopped at twenty minutes to nine. A wedding banquet has been laid out in the dining room for decades. She still wears the wedding dress she was putting on when the letter arrived to inform her that her groom would not be coming; she wears only one shoe because she had not yet put the other one on when the letter arrived. She uses her wealth and power to let her estate go to waste and to raise an adopted daughter for the sole purpose of enacting her revenge against all men. Mentally and morally, she remains frozen at one moment in time, the moment of her grief and anger at being abandoned at the altar. No one ever sees her eat or drink. She may be alive in the most technical sense, but she is a living corpse, illustrating the key difference between the living and the dead: the living can change, the dead do not.
Gandalf, describing the terrible effect of the Great Rings on mortals (and describing the doom of Smeagol/Gollum), says, 'A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness.' Sure enough, Gollum is described as thin and bony, indistinguishable from a child's skeleton when seen from the air. It is only when he loses the Ring does he show any potential for change.
"The dead know only one thing," says Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket, "that it is better to be alive."
Death is an impenetrable barrier. Perhaps there is something resembling life afterwards, and as Thomas Paine says, "I hope for happiness beyond this life." But whatever may lie beyond death, one thing seems clear: it is not life; once dead, we cannot improve for good or ill the state of our souls. We have only our lifetimes in which to affect the world. It is important to distinguish between Jacob Marley and Marley's Ghost. The apparition that appears to Scrooge is not the same as Marley the living man, it is only a remnant, a shade, a restless spirit doomed to feel remorse for sins it can no longer correct. Marley's Ghost shows Scrooge the many phantoms floating hopelessly through the air: "The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. "
The Ghost of Christmas Future, probably the most memorable of them all with its Grim Reaper-like appearance, shows Scrooge what will happen after he dies. Interestingly, it does not show him his future ghost walking around clad in heavy chains; the imagery of Marley's Ghost and its fetters is a conceit to illustrate the self-harm caused by accumulation of sin, rather than a literal demonstration of afterlife punishment. The real cost of sin is internal, and in the absence of knowledge of an afterlife, this punishment is best illustrated by the reactions of other people to Scrooge's death.
People he did business with in life mention his demise only in passing, showing no real emotion or interest beyond the disposition of his wealth. The maid who cleans his chambers steals the curtains off his bed with his corpse lying in it so that she can sell them to a pawn shop. A family that owes him money rejoices, for they figure that whoever takes over his accounts isn't likely to be worse than him. When Scrooge demands of the Spirit to show him someone feeling remorse, he sees Bob Crachit's family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. And of course, in one of the most famous scenes from the book, Scrooge sees his own lonely grave. He is not threatened with punishment after death; instead, he is shown that death is the end, and all that remains after his death is the other people in his life, the ones he can choose to help or not. No matter what he does, the same quiet grave awaits, and it's only while his life lasts that he can redeem himself.
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." -Ecclesiastes 9:10