A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Towards the end of 1843, in South London, a gifted young writer could be seen late at night, wrapped in a long coat, feverishly pacing the City sidewalks. As he walked fifteen and twenty miles at a stretch, he shouted out in the cold night air, laughed aloud and even wept at times. Those who knew Charles Dickens understood that he was writing again. They knew that Dickens always took his imagination to the streets and the streets into his imagination. His writings were characteristically sensitive to the human condition and especially the plight of the less fortunate. For that reason and the many popular Christmas stories that he published each December for so many years, the name Dickens has become forever linked with the spirit of Christmas. It is the “Christmas Carol” that he first developed while braving the chilly night air and briskly pacing the streets of London in November, 1843, for which he is best known and loved today more than a century and half later.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF EBENEZER SCROOGE
We all know the story, how an extremely self-centered and tight-fisted old man, named Ebenezer Scrooge, was touched by the Spirit on Christmas Eve. He then changed and became a man of compassion, kindness and spontaneous generosity. The story is divided into five parts: Part I presents the unredeemed Scrooge in all his miserly selfishness and concludes with the warning appearance of the departed spirit of his former business partner, Jacob Marley. He reminds Scrooge, “Mankind was my business.” This is the lesson that Scrooge is taught on that enchanted Christmas Eve.
CHRISTMAS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Part II takes Scrooge through the first stage of his education and transformation, the rediscovery of his own childhood Christmas memories. The “Ghost of Christmas Past” introduces Scrooge to the child and young man he once was and invites him to compare that compassionate, sensitive and imaginative individual with the cold, selfish, old “skinflint” he has become. The “Ghost of Christmas Present” then shows him current examples of Christmas celebrated well. Scrooge sees these celebrations from his new and softened perspective. The last of the spirits, the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come”, appeals to Scrooge’s fear of his own mortality and dying alone and unloved to complete his conversion.
In the final Part, we see the newly enlightened Scrooge make up for the omissions of many Christmases past. The transformed and contrite Scrooge does not merely devote his life to social work. He also acts out his new change of heart and character on a personal level. He buys a prize turkey and sends it anonymously to the Cratchits and he gives a large donation to the philanthropic gentleman he had snubbed the day before. He makes friends with the nephew he had previously rejected and he gives his clerk a raise in pay.
Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” tenderly concludes with numerous examples of Scrooge’s excitement that fateful Christmas morning when, after his sobering interviews with a succession of Spirits the night before, he is presented with his first opportunity to demonstrate the depth of his repentance and his new exuberance for life. He learned that true happiness comes from service to our fellow man and selfless giving. In addition to numerous specific acts of kindness and charity by Scrooge that Christmas morning, Dickens tells us that “[Scrooge] went to church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk – that anything – could give him so much happiness.”
This final scene culminates in a touching conversation between Scrooge and his previously neglected employee, Bob Cratchit:
“A Merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another ‘i’, Bob Cratchit.”
The classic tale closes with this heartwarming tribute to Scrooge:
“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old City knew, or any other good old City, Town, or Borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
From the time of his transformation, and every year thereafter, it was always said of Scrooge, “That he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” May that be truly said of all of us, “everyone!”
CHRISTMAS 2009
This Christmas, my heart breaks at the thought of the steep increase in unemployment (up to over 10% nationwide and more than 17% if you include the discouraged and the underemployed) in this land of abundant opportunity. It is only half of that in Utah, we are told but still twice what it was during better times earlier in the decade. Like Dickens, I look out at the cold dark streets and I ache for Mothers and Fathers who carry within their hearts fears and anxiety over what this Christmas and the New Year may bring to them. Then my heart sings, “O Come All Ye Faithful . . . O Come Let Us Adore Him”. Christmas is a holiday and celebration of the most profound importance. On that day, we joyously and yet reverently commemorate a moment so pivotal in its eternal significance that even the very method of calendaring time itself would thereafter be counted forward or backward from that night in Bethlehem when Jesus Christ was born as foretold and recounted in the Bible.
Christ’s miraculous power can lift every spirit, comfort every heart, wipe away every tear and redeem every soul. He loves the little children and calls for us all to become as little children (and what better time than at Christmas, said Dickens). I know that “the future is as bright as [our] faith”. Still, for many people, the prolonged downturn in our economy and its rippling effects, which touch every family, are painful and difficult.
May happy memories of Christmas past, joyous and hopeful memories of Christmas present and bright and promising visions of Christmases to come fill your hearts and homes this Christmas. May America continue to live out the dream and forever uphold those unalienable rights received from our Creator as enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And as we think back on “Christmas Past,” remember General Washington and his men crossing the icy Delaware River on Christmas Eve, 1776 and the brave World War II soldiers who longed for their families and loved ones as they sang, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas – If Only in My Dreams.”
Our homeland was attacked at Pearl Harbor in the month of Christmas, 1941. Life’s challenges, unfortunately, do not all stand still during the Christmas season. That is what makes our faith and our reverence for the message and true meaning of Christmas all the more precious and beautiful. Christmas stirs within us the deepest and most profound gratitude for the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. As expressed by Howard W. Hunter, the spirit of Christmas is:
“[A] desire to sacrifice for others, to render service and to possess a feeling of universal brotherhood. It consists of a willingness to forget what you have done for others, and to remember what others have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and think only of your duties in the middle distance, and your chance to do good and aid your fellow-men in the foreground – to see that your fellow-men are just as good as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts – to close your book of grievances against the universe, and look about you for a place to sow a few seeds of happiness, and go your way unobserved.”
I express my love and appreciation for the gift of God’s only begotten Son and his atoning sacrifice, which is the greatest gift of all.
We wish you all a loving, caring, hopeful and very Merry Christmas this year and always. Because the Savior, in doing his Father’s will, does all things perfectly, He both gives and takes, remembers and forgets – perfectly.
What Santa cannot do, God can and does. “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37).
From our family to yours, we also share and pass on to you two of our favorite Christmas poems by Edgar Guest.
Merry Christmas to All.
LaVar and Sue Christensen
At Christmas
Edgar A. Guest
A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season’s here;
Then he’s thinking more of others than he’s thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.
When it’s Christmas man is bigger and is better in his part;
He is keener for the service that is prompted by the heart.
All the petty thoughts and narrow seem to vanish for awhile
And the true reward he’s seeking is the glory of a smile.
Then for others he is toiling and somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas he is almost what God wanted him to be.
If I had to paint a picture of a man I think I’d wait
Till he’d fought his selfish battles and had put aside his hate.
I’d not catch him at his labors when his thoughts are all of pelf,
On the long days and the dreary when he’s striving for himself.
I’d not take him when he’s sneering, when he’s scornful or depressed,
But I’d look for him at Christmas when he’s shining at his best.
Man is ever in a struggle and he’s oft misunderstood;
There are days the worst that’s in him is the master of the good,
But at Christmas kindness rules him and he puts himself aside
And his petty hates are vanquished and his heart is opened wide.
Oh, I don’t know how to say it, but somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas man is almost what God sent him here to be.
From the LaVar and Sue
Christensen Family
At Christmas Bit
Edgar A. Guest
If I were Santa Claus this year
I’d change his methods for the day;
I’d give to all the children here
But there are things I’d take away.
I’d enter into every home to steal,
With giving I’d not be content.
I’d find the heart-aches men conceal
And take them with me when I went.
I’d rob the invalid of pain;
I’d steal the poor man’s weight of care;
I’d take the prisoner’s ball and chain
And every crime which sent him there.
I’d take the mother’s fears away,
The doubts which often fret the wise –
And all should wake on Christmas Day
With happy hearts and shining eyes.
For old and young this is my prayer;
God bless us all this Christmas Day
And give us strength our tasks to bear,
And take our bitter griefs away!
From the LaVar and Sue
Christensen Family
Posted by: LaVar Christensen