No Christmas is complete without one special story. In many ways it is the story that restarted the whole Christmas Celebration. Though Christmas is and always will be about the Celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Our traditions and our way of celebrating comes from a fictional source that source is a novel and that novel is the tale of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
The year is 1843. Charles Dickens has published some wonderful work up to that time but his last two novels didn’t sell very well. He was up against a wall. He was in debt and he had to provide for his family, he needed something that would make his career jump start, and he needed something that would make money quickly. He decided to write a Christmas story and that decision changed him and changed us for the next 170 years.
It took Dickens six weeks to write A Christmas Carol. His family said they could hear him giggling with glee while he was working. Dickens truly loved the work he was doing. Dickens also took a huge risk, he published the book himself. He wanted to be able to keep all the profits, so he took on the job of self-publishing he also designed the book. He had wood cut illustrations done, he chose to use a red cover and he gilded the pages with gold. The book would be a delight to look at as well as a delight to read.
The celebration of Christmas had just begun to come back in 1843. It had gone out of fashion for many years and to be honest it was also outlawed. People went to work on Christmas day. There were few parties and fewer people celebrating. Dickens’ father, however, loved Christmas and Charles Dickens grew up loving and celebrating the day. However that was not the case for most people. But when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, he brought with him to England the German tradition of a Christmas tree and Christmas began being celebrated in the palace, so it would follow that it would be celebrated in the entire British Empire. Dickens helped this happen.
Dickens published his book, it was an immediate sensation and though he did not make the money he was hoping to, the book reset his career and some of his greatest work was done after he published “The Carol” as he referred to the book.
For those of you who never read a or seen a film version of “the Carol”, the story tells of a miserly old man who has grown heartless toward people and only cared for the money he was making. Seven years before the book opens, the old man, Ebenezer Scrooge has a partner named Jacob Marley. Marley had died seven years ago on Christmas Eve, seven years before the opening of our story. Scrooge is visited by Marley’s Ghost and warned he was headed for a horrible after life if he didn’t change. In order to make sure that happened Marley had arranged for the visit of three others spirits to help Scrooge. Scrooge didn’t really like the idea but Marley gives him no choice.
Scrooge is visited by three ghosts, The Ghost of Christmas past Future and Present. These three spirits bring home to Scrooge the errors of his ways and in so doing changes Scrooge and opens his shut down heart.
The story of A Christmas Carol is the story of ones man’s redemption from evil. It is the story of the work of Jesus in each of us if we allow him to do that. It is also a template for psychotherapy as some psychologists have figured out. Dickens wrote his “Carol” before Freud, but I suspect Freud read it. I think the template of looking at ones past to see what went wrong, honestly evaluating the present to see what the problems are and then looking to the future to see what will happen if we do not change is almost the basis of all therapy. So what Dickens work appeals to us? It appeals to us because it shows us that we do have the power to change. It takes a supernatural act, but it does exist.
Scrooge did not change by himself he needed help and we all do. Change is not something that comes about on our own. It takes the touch of God to make it happen. Scrooge’s change occurred because of the touch of the other world, the world beyond that we cannot comprehend.
With the publication of Dickens book The Christmas Holiday went back to its joy. Employers began to give their employees off for the day and some even gave gifts of money or food. People began to celebrate in earnest. The Christmas tree took its place in the world and the Christmas holiday would grow into what we know today.
I have a yearly tradition. On the 21st of December, I read the first chapter of A Christmas Carol and read one chapter a night until Christmas Morning where I read the last chapter. This brings a beauty to the day and joy to me as the treasured words of Dickens’ tale come back and haunt me every year.
