A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

Dickens has a such a wonderful way of being universally poignant while still serving the story he is telling. This quote hits me every time I read this story. It is so succinctly how I have felt many and many a times. As I’ve heard it otherwise expressed, “youth is wasted on the young.”

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"

This quote reminds me yearly about my responsibility for my own happiness in life. It is a valuable effort to live each moment as though you may one day return to it and witness, helplessly, its unfolding. Make the story of life one filled with happy endings!

"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

I wonder if this is a dig at the hypocrisy within religion. The use of the common ‘faith’ to take advantage of the masses. The term “humbug” that Scrooge uses is meant as a disbelief in the generosity of spirit and wealth of Christmas, is the Spirit of Christmas Present giving merit to Scrooge’s thought, but warning him that; while it is present in the world, it is far from universal? There is a lot to unpack in this quotation.

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."

give credit where credit is due and be aware of over generalization. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.

Be mindful of which you spread more! I chuckled at this line reading it this year. It seems ironic and particularly hard-hitting during a holiday season within a pandemic!

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

This passage has always befuddled me. Is it a voice in Scrooge’s head, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come projecting the thought into his mind, or the narrator giving voice to the thought of Scrooge? Even once as that is understood, I struggle to grasp the meaning of the passage. I get that whomever is speaking is addressing Death itself, but to what purpose? It is a giving way to death, a yielding to the inevitable, but why?

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"

Simply stated, take charge of our life; what you plant today is what you will reap tomorrow. That which you pour out into the world is more likely to be what you may drink from it. Pour out love, gratitude, benevolence, understanding, that you may receive the same when you are in need.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

The moment Scrooge relents his former self and is reclaimed among the human race.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

I think this line influenced Patrick Stewart’s interpretation of Scrooge at the end of the 1999 TNT/Hallmark production of “A Christmas Carol” when he struggles to laugh — hilariously — before laughing heartily!

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. He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

This paragraph is a perfect ending to a perfect story. I read it often — even throughout the year — as a reminder to do well to others, live an authentic life, and let those who will laugh at you, laugh at you. Be who you are and love with all that you have.