Reading from the Introduction of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
Reading from the Introduction of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Chanere partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever 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 dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Sermon
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has become an integral part of the holiday season. It ranks right there with the Nutcracker ballet, Handel’s Messiah, and Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life” as an inescapable cultural artifact of the holiday season. The Denver Center Theater Company packs people in for a month to see their marvelous production. Heaven knows how many versions will be broadcast this month. Ebenezer Scrooge’s growling “Bah! Humbug” has become part of our language. The mention of the name Scrooge immediately calls up an image of a mean spirited old miser.
Ironically, A Christmas Carol is not really about Christmas. Dickens’ story isn’t even particularly Christian, at least not in any orthodox way. There is no mention of the baby Jesus, the manger, Bethlehem, Mary, Joseph, wise men, shepherds or angels. This is, I believe, a tale about spiritual awakening, a story of human transformation and salvation. This is the tale of a profoundly religious experience. In the end, it is a story of hope.
Today I would have us revisit this perhaps overfamiliar tale. I believe it has powerful lessons to teach us if we, like Scrooge, can see things with fresh eyes.
The tale begins on Christmas Eve in the London office of Scrooge and Marley. Jacob Marley had been Scrooge’s partner until Marley’s death seven years earlier. Scrooge has never bothered to change the sign. It is a telling omission, for their strange relationship is not yet ended. Inside the counting house, Scrooge employs an underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, a long suffering soul if ever there was one. It is a bitterly cold day, but Scrooge is such a miser that he keeps the coal tin in his office and will not let Cratchit have enough to break the chill in his workplace.
Scrooge’s nephew Fred drops by to wish his Uncle a merry Christmas and, as is Fred’s custom, to invite his uncle to Christmas dinner tomorrow. This is where we first hear Scrooge’s infamous “Bah, Humbug.” As he has done for a number of years, Scrooge crankily turns down the dinner invitation.
As Fred leaves, two portly gentlemen walk in collecting money for the poor and destitute. Scrooge rebuffs them, asking caustically if the prisons and workhouses are still functioning. The men reply that they are, but that they are inadequate. They add that some people would rather die than go to a poor house. In words that will come to haunt him, Scrooge replies, “If they would rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.” Ebenezer sends them off without a penny.
When a poor boy comes to his door to offer a Christmas carol, Scrooge chases him off.
Finally Scrooge leaves the office and takes his usual melancholy dinner at his usual melancholy tavern. As he reaches his dreary home, once the home of his partner Jacob Marley, he places his key in the lock. It is here that his ghostly adventures begin. As he glances at the knocker on the door, he is amazed to see the knocker transformed into a likeness of Marley’s face. As he stares at the knocker, he sees it once again become a simple knocker. The face of Marley reappears in his room. Shortly after he enters his room, the ghost of Marley appears, dragging heavy chains. At first Scrooge refuses to believe what he sees, but the Marley ghost persists. Listen to part of the encounter between between Scrooge and Marley.
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"
"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.
"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!"
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time!"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
Jacob Marley’s ghost goes on to tell Scrooge that he will be haunted by three ghosts. Marley tells him that without these hauntings, Scrooge cannot hope to escape a fate like Marley’s.
After sleeping and awakening, the first ghost appears at the time Marley had predicted. The first spirit is the Ghost of Christmas Past. It is but another name for memories Scrooge has long suppressed.
The ghost first leads him to where he was raised. Scrooge sees himself alone at school on Christmas Eve. Scrooge sobs as he observes the boy Ebenezer alone, neglected and abandoned. He and the ghost then fly off to a mansion in ruins, and find little Ebenezer sitting alone with a book. Scrooge again weeps at the sight of the desperately lonely boy he had been. He is beginning to see with his heart once more. His mind then turns to the boy who had offered a Christmas carol at his office the previous day.
Scrooge says, “I wish…but it’s too late now.”
“What is the matter?” asks the Spirit.
“Nothing,” says Scrooge. “Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something: that’s all.”
Quickly the spirit of memory takes him to a scene several years later. Once again, we find Ebenezer all alone in a dilapidated school, all the other boys having gone home for the holidays.
His young sister Fan comes rushing in and joyfully announces that Ebenezer to is come home to stay. Clearly he has been gone from home a long time. Or, rather, he has been banished from home. “Father is so much kinder than he used to be” Fan announces.
Fan died a young woman, leaving one child: Scrooge’s nephew Fred.
In these scenes from his childhood we begin to understand the emotional shell the fragile boy Ebenezer has built to protect himself. We witness rejection, neglect, loneliness and a looming poverty. We see how the young Ebenezer had hardened his heart as a means of emotional self preservation. What begins as a wall of self protection so easily becomes a prison wall that separates us from human contact. I wonder what walls each of us has created—walls that began as protection but have become walls that imprison our spirits.
The ghost of the past then takes Scrooge to warehouse where he was apprenticed. The proprietor, Old Fezziwig (what a name!) is closing up shop Christmas Eve and preparing to host a party for the staff. There is food, drink, a fiddler and dancing. Ebenezer joins in the festivities. The older Scrooge becomes completely enthralled by the pleasant memories. Let us listen to Scrooge and the ghost after watching Fezziwig’s party.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of gratitude."
"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said,
"Why! Is it not! He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing in particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now! That's all."
As the ghost no doubt intended, Scrooge now sees the startling contrast between Fezziwig as an employer and his own conduct toward Cratchit.
The next memory is perhaps the most poignant. Ebenezer is now a young man making his way in London. The scene is the parting of ways between Ebenezer and Belle, the sweetheart of his youth. Belle realizes that Ebenezer has become obsessed with financial success. In his flight from vulnerability, in his flight from his fear of poverty, Scrooge loses Belle. He is now utterly alone in the world.
And yet this visit from memory is painful blessing. This visit to the past allows him to see his life in a new light. He can now feel compassion for the suffering of the boy he was. He sees the enormous price he has paid in the pursuit of a false sense of security and independence. And, perhaps most important, Scrooge is now beginning to see what his hardness is doing not only to himself, but to the people around him.
He is about to see his effect on others much more clearly. Scrooge awakens to find himself confronting the second of the three ghosts Marley promised.
The Ghost of Christmas present takes Scrooge on a tour of people celebrating Christmas, finally ending with a visit to Bob Cratchit and his family having their modest Christmas dinner. Scrooge sees the warmth of this poor but close-knit family. They do not have much, but delight in what they do have and in each other’s company. And it is here that he first sees Tiny Tim, the Cratchits’ crippled and sickly child. Let us visit the Cratchits as they gather by the fire after their Christmas dinner.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us."
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,"tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit. Say he will be spared."
On this tour of the present, the spirit shows Scrooge other simple and poor people who yet can find joy and cause for celebration.
The final visit is at the home of Fred, his nephew. There Scrooge hears Fred relating to friends his previous day’s encounter with the old miser. Scrooge and the spirit remain at Fred’s party as the friends begin to play “Yes and No,” a game in which one has to determine what someone is thinking of by asking only yes and no questions. Fred thinks of something. In rapid fire the clues are assembled: it is an animal, a live animal, a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growls and grunts sometimes, and talks sometimes and lives in London, and walks the streets, isn’t made a show of, and isn’t led by anybody, doesn’t live in a menagerie, and is never killed in a market, is not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At last a a guest solves the mystery: the disagreeable, savage, growling animal is Scrooge. Some complain, though, that the answer to the question “Is it a bear?” should have been yes.
The ghost of the present confronts Scrooge with images of how others see him. Ebenezer sees himself in a new light again. And, in the case of Tiny Tim, he sees how his abstract pronouncements about “surplus population” play out in reality, where that surplus is someone’s precious but fragile child.
This ghost of the present makes me reflect on the suffering to which I turn a blind eye. What opportunities to connect with others am I shutting out? What are you and I missing in our lives because we are so busy, because we wear blinders of fear, selfishness, habit, insecurity? How much of the time, like Marley and Scrooge, do we spend shut away in our in our offices, or our homes? The price is devastating. When we shut ourselves off, we wither and die. When we reach out, the very act of reaching out transforms us.
The final ghost is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. This ghost helps us see the consequences of our present behavior.
This is a truly chilling part of the tale. This, with good reason, is the spirit Scrooge fears most. Scrooge sees thieves squabbling over a dead man’s sheets, blankets and bedcurtains. He overhears commentary, without sympathy, on the old man’s death. No one mourns. The man dies utterly alone. Scrooge resists seeing what is plain before his eyes, but the spirit will not let him avoid it. Let us join them at the end of the journey.
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
"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."
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life."
The kind hand trembled.
"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!"
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate aye reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
Scrooge emerges from these ghostly visits a transformed man. He awakens to find it is Christmas day. He sends the Cratchit family a huge turkey to replace the small goose the whole family would share. He finds the men collecting for the poor and donates a hefty sum, allowing as how many back payments are included. He gathers the courage to make his way to his nephew Fred’s for dinner after all these years. He raises poor Bob Cratchit’s meager wages. He becomes a benefactor to the Cratchit family, helping save the life of Tiny Tim.
Ebeneezer Scrooge has passed through a dark and ghost-filled night of the soul to appear on the other side as a new man.
Each of us, from time to time, needs a visit from our own ghosts. Like Ebenezer, we need to break out of our rut. We need take an honest and openhearted look at where we have been, where we are, and where we are headed.
Happily I know of no one here who has become as cold hearted and prickly as Scrooge. And yet I know I have taken a few steps in that direction. I sometimes feel an exasperated “Bah, humbug” welling up inside me. I suspect you have too. I know I too often put blinders on myself. I erect walls that cut me off, that help me hide. I let routine tasks consume me. Do you?
We could do worse than follow Ebenezer’s lead. He begins by his journey by seeing himself as a child again, but this time seeing the pain and loss that shaped him. He sees himself with compassion, and grieves for that child and his suffering. As he looks deeply into his past, he faces honestly his bad choices and lost opportunities. He sees the example he failed to follow and the love he failed to return. You and I have our own ghosts from the past. We have our own suffering and pain. When we face these we help open new possibilities.
But you and I cannot only look back. We must face our situation today. Are you and I living as we truly wish to live? Are we treating those around us with kindness? Is there the equivalent of a Bob Cratchit, a Tiny Tim, a nephew Fred in our lives? What treasured relationships have we let grow cold? What offers of friendship and celebration are you and I rejecting?
And, I believe most important, where are you and I headed? How do you and I want to be remembered? This time next year, or in five or ten or twenty years, what will we wish we had done with our one precious life? What fears, what insecurities, what habits, what painful memories, are holding us back?
This is a deeply religious story. It is a parable of hope. It is a tale of wondrous possibilities.
It can be our story, too. There is hope for each of our lives if we will but see it.
You and I should invite our ghosts over for a visit now and then (though Christmas Eve may not be the best time). May each of us open ourselves to our own ghosts. May our ghosts, like Ebenezer’s, open our eyes and rekindle our hearts. May the spirits of the past, present and future be guides to a life of renewed joy, renewed tenderness, renewed affection, and deep peace.
May the joy, the love and peace we find be the foundation for spreading understanding, compassion and peace into a world haunted by hatred, ignorance, fear and poverty.
Let’s not be afraid of our ghosts. May our ghosts open the way to lives filled with love and joy.
Amen.