Post 49/2023. I do not remember ever reading A Christmas Story, by Charles Dickens. The movie, yes, but not the wonderfully written text published in 1843. For the youngest set, Dickens (1812-1870) tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

Throughout history, and today, some people appear to be frozen as antagonistic, baddie, iniquitous characters. Scrooge proves that one can change for the good. In the Preface of the first edition, Dickens wrote: “I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.”

Dickens describes Scrooge this way: “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had every struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.”

Then a page later, “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!’ cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

“‘Bah!’ said Scrooge, ‘Humbug!'”

I’ll leave the story there while the ghosts work their magic. Scrooge’s eyes, heart and hands will be transformed. What a miracle. Glory be.

I wish you a Merry Christmas / Happy Holiday!

-John