A (Post) Christmas Carol

Is it too late for another Christmas post?  KLove is still playing the Christmas tunes and New Years is kind of like a fake holiday, so I think I’m okay.

This Christmas I had two different encounters with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  The story is one that I always assumed I knew because it’s such a classic, but I realized this year that all I really knew about the story is that there’s a guy named Scrooge who says “bah humbug”, and I watched Melissa Zimmerman (when she was a Walters) in a theater production of the story when we were in about ninth grade.

Also, when it comes to fictional characters who hate Christmas, everything starts to blur together with The Grinch.

Needless to say, I really had no idea what A Christmas Carol is about.  This year, I got educated after our family went through a walking tour of A Christmas Carol exhibit in Philadelphia and later when we gathered around on Christmas Eve to watch the made-for-TV movie recreation of the story.  Despite the fact that we waited over an hour in line to see the exhibit, and the movie took some frightening liberties in depicting certain characters:

…becoming acquainted with the story opened my eyes to a number of Spiritual realities.

For those (like me) who don’t really know the story, here are the highlights (spoiler alert...but seriously, the book was written in 1843, so if no one has spoiled it for you by know, they need to):

A man named Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas.  He says “bah humbug” a lot (which I can only assume is the 1843 translation of “Ughhhhh >:-/”).  He lives only for his business and making money.  One night before Christmas, a ghost of Scrooge’s old business partner, Jacob Marley (who died seven years prior), visits Scrooge and warns him to change his selfish and greedy ways.  When he lived, Marley had the same negative attitude as Scrooge, and he warns Ebenezer that it has haunted him after death.  Scrooge is then visited by three spirits—the Ghost of Christmas Past who takes him back to his childhood, the Ghost of Christmas Present who shows him various people in his town who live humbly but have great joy, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come who shows him what the world will be like if Scrooge doesn’t change.  The visits with the ghosts are enough to convince Scrooge that there is more to life than his business, and in turn, he renews his attitude to be generous and enthusiastic about life.

Allusions to Scripture are all throughout the story:

“Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” –A Christmas Carol

“But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” (John 11:10)

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“There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.” –ACC

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:22)

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“‘You fear the world too much,' she answered gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you.’” –ACC

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." (Matthew 6:24)

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“‘Come in!’ exclaimed the Ghost. ‘Come in! and know me better, man!”… ‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,’ said the Spirit. ‘Look upon me!’…‘Touch my robe!’” –ACC

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)

“When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’” (Mark 5:27-28)

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This year, Christmas has come and gone.  But the call to “come and know” Jesus is a daily one.  Each day I should try to know Him better than yesterday.  I should, by His grace, be more righteous than the day before.  There is hope in Christ to be the person I was made to be.

Scrooge had the life-altering chance to see what his life would be like if he continued in darkness; Jesus came so that we would not even have to dream of darkness.  Let us continue, each day, in the light as He is in the light.

“God bless us, every one!” –Ebenezer Scrooge