'A Christmas Carol' Appreciation Post

I love to read, but my experience with oft’ retold stories, or “The Classics,” has been largely unenthusiastic. I recall reading Romeo and Juliet for the first time and thinking, “This has been done better since.” To me, The Gift of the Magi was “meh” and I could have done without Moby Dick in its entirety. Then there was Great Expectations. When I tell you I hate Great Expectations I want you to know I mean it with my soul. Then again, I was perhaps most disappointed with the Dickensian classic because my expectations of the author were so great as to be unable to be met (see what I did there?). You see, when it comes to any iteration of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol I want it hooked. to. my. veins.

I mainline that story every year in as many formats as I can digest - and there’s no shortage of interpretations. My personal favorite hails from 1970’s London and stars Albert Finney in the title role of Scrooge, and that’s not just because it’s a family tradition to watch it at Christmastime, but because it is a lyrical masterpiece credited to Leslie Bricusse (check him out, the man is responsible for the music of numerous stage and cinematic classics and is still alive, presumably counting his money). Every year, right around this time, I get to thinking of why I love this damn story so much, and I think I have it boiled down to three points of entry to my heart.

Number 1: Embracing Three-Dimensional Thinking

I don’t like when people tell me to live 100% in the present; I’ve always thought of it as a selfish way of thinking. To act as if your past doesn’t shape your present and your present doesn’t shape your future, or to believe that anyone can ignore this in the midst of large-scale decision-making makes me crazy. What we do reverberates whether we want it to or not. Undoubtedly, our actions today have a greater effect on our future than on our past, but behavior can reshape past interpretations of ourselves in as many different ways as there are people who know us. I like that Scrooge isn’t shown shadows of his past as an element of his life he needs to reconcile, but rather as a part of his current self that has led to his being so closed off. Scrooge is shown a future that can be altered, but the past is unchangeable. His past, like all of ours, has high points and low points, but what’s important is to acknowledge it. Advice like, “once the past is behind you, leave it there,” sound nice, but the truth is we are our pasts and no one’s is perfect. We don’t have to dwell on the isolations, heartaches, or spotted histories within us, we only have to do the hard work simultaneously honoring them as a part of our story while not allowing them to define us.

Number 2.: It Reframes Holiday Gatherings

I’m from and love the Northeast, so Christmas without snow has always felt lacking to me. It’s the dichotomy of the cold outside and the warm glow of the holiday lights and decorated tree in all the windows that encapsulates the magic of the season for me. But in Victorian London, as now, Dickens used the story to illuminate the human suffering just outside the frosted windows of those who are fortunate enough to have a place to call home, even if that’s just an able body. Ebenezer Scrooge dislikes lighting because keeping things dark and cold is less expensive, but those with families and friends (Bob Cratchit and Fred amongst them, in the story’s universe) allow for 2 AM, ghost-hosted peeping by Scrooge because they indulge in light and warmth for the benefit of themselves and others. Elements of relative expense are not spared on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day because money spent being with those you care about isn’t an expense, it’s an investment.

The Spirit of Christmas Present, after illuminating and setting a feast in the great room, demands of Scrooge, “Come in! and know me better, man!” The greatest gift we can give to others and to ourselves is endeavoring to know one another better so that we can allow ourselves to be bettered by those around us. The catch is you have to invite folks inside in order to benefit. Mankind, despite its many faults, benefits from the welcoming of knowing and being known on an individual level that is often overlooked, and no one gets the opportunity to know anyone if not invited in with warmth and humility. That seems simple enough, but it can be tough to teach to even the least-Scroogey amongst us.

Number 3: It Gets Dark

I don’t really connect with anything that isn’t grounded in reality, and the ultimate reality is that we’re all gonna die. Doesn’t matter how smart, funny, attractive, nice, mean, fierce, tall, or endearing you are - your fate is the same as everyone else’s. And that’s scary. I really don’t care who you are or what you believe: there’s no way the definitive end of the human experience doesn’t unsettle you. Dickens, in his writing, has Fred remark that the holiday season allows for souls to see one another as “fellow passengers to the grave” who truly see each other as such and honor that connection in the festive season. It’s not a Christmasy thought, per se, but it’s the ultimate tie that binds us as fully to those we know and love as to those we don’t know and don’t even like. It’s no surprise, then, that the Ghost of Christmas Future resembles a Grim Reaper, but there’s a dark comfort in his unsettling silence. As Scrooge emplores the specter he fears most of all to speak to him, it becomes more and more clear that the fear we assign to the future comes from its very lack of guidance. We can’t know exactly where the path we’ve laid and are laying will take us, or how we’ll be regarded at each future destination but, as a tearful Scrooge declares in his singular moment of defiance with the shrouded figure, “a life can be made right.”

A life can be made right.

Don’t count anyone out, including yourself…especially at Christmas. For all the miracles associated with the season, self-redemption just might be my favorite.