Ilove the Holiday Season. While, as a Unitarian Universalist, I don’t believe God caused Jesus to be born so that he could be killed to save us from our sins – that seems like a rather inhumane thing for a God we believe is loving to do – I’m moved by the story of a child being born in humble circumstances – a child who would bring a gospel of love into the world. And I’m moved by the spirit of generosity that surrounds Christmas, even for those who don’t believe in a more conservative interpretation of the traditional story. I’m also moved by the Spirit of Life that’s been associated with this season since a time long before the birth of Jesus. The season brings with it an uplifting of feelings that comes with the realization that the shrinking of days won’t continue into our being overwhelmed by darkness – and that nature will come alive again come spring. Usually, by this time of year, those of us who live in colder climes have had enough snow and cold to cause us to yearn for the warmer weather and rebirth of nature.
So, I’m glad our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors overcame the Puritanism of their ancestors and decided to make something of this time of year. When the Universalists came into being with their notion of a joyous and loving God they insisted on celebrating Christmas in their churches, whether their Puritan ancestors like it or not – and they didn’t. The Puritans forbid the celebration of Christmas. With increased immigration things began to change. It was a Unitarian minister from Germany who introduced to this country the Christmas custom of setting up evergreen trees in our homes and decorating them. And, it was a Unitarian in Great Britain, Charles Dickens, who wrote the story about this season that’s at least as popular as the one about Jesus.
It’s a story that wasn’t apart of my family’s Christmas. While my parents liked the Holiday it was mostly an at-home event. My parents weren’t great churchgoers. Easter was about the only time they went. But they made sure I got a full dose of going. They sent me down the street every Sunday to the Episcopal church were I went to Sunday School and sang in the choir, earning 25 cents a week as a boy soprano. So, on Christmas Eve, late at night, I was always in church, dressed up in black and white, singing the carols I still love to sing, even though I no longer get the 25 cents.
Before the service, my brothers and I were sent out to purchase one of those scraggly trees that were all that was left on Christmas Eve – the kind you had to drill holes in so you could plug in branches where none had grown. The reward for the tree-getting and church-going this was that when I woke up on Christmas morning, exhausted from the singing and getting, I would discover that Santa Claus, as promised, had paid a visit to our house and piled presents under the tree. As the day unfolded, members of our extended family would appear, more presents would be shared and a big turkey, with lots of sweet potatoes and stuffing, would be eaten – or better, yet, a standing rib roast would be devoured by those who had stifled their hunger until it appeared. There weren’t any religious symbols in my home. There weren’t any mangers or angels. Those were for church. And even the Christmas tree, by New Years Day, would disappear, along with all the other reminders of Christmas. But there was a spirit abroad in my home at Christmastime that was special – and everyone in my family looked forward to it.
Though what happened at home was more important to me than what happened in church, it never occurred to me, in those days, to think about what it must have been like not to be a Christian at Christmas. Although there was a closeted Unitarian family who lived up the street, in the opposite direction from the church, there weren’t many people in my town who weren’t Christian. So, I never thought of what it would be like to Jewish or Sikh or Buddhist – to be a member of a faith in which there was no role for Jesus, so no need to celebrate his birth.
I thought that this last year when my wife and I spent the Holidays in Australia, a country in which, though a majority of its people say they’re Christian, only a handful of people pay attention to religion. Because of this, there isn’t much of a religious flavor to the Holidays – and many of the non-religious customs we associate with Christmas here in the Northern Hemisphere don’t make much sense in the middle of summer, which is what the end of December is in Australia. At Christmastime last year Jan and I were in Rockhampton, which is situated smack on the Topic of Capricorn, where it never gets below 80 degrees Fahrenheit, day or night, and jingle bells aren’t on sleighs, they’re on Utes, that is, pickup trucks, with big Roo bars on the front, eskys (beer coolers) in their boots (trunks) and kelpies (dogs) sitting next to the drivers. If you’ll excuse my voice, the song “Jingle Bells” in Australia goes like this:
Dashing through the bush,
in a rusty Holden Ute,
Kicking up the dust,
esky in the boot,
kelpie by my side,
singing Christmas songs,
It's Summer time and I am in
my singlet, shorts and thongs
Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut!,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.
Engine's getting hot;
we dodge the kangaroos,
The swaggie climbs aboard,
he is welcome too.
All the family's there,
sitting by the pool,
Christmas Day the Aussie way,
by the barbecue.
Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut!,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.
Come the afternoon,
Grandpa has a doze,
The kids and Uncle Bruce,
are swimming in their clothes.
The time comes 'round to go,
we take the family snap,
Pack the car and all shoot through,
before the washing up.
Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut!,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.
But, as hot as it may be on the Tropic of Capricorn at Christmas time, there is one story even the Aussies can’t do without. Just like for us, it’s Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Almost everyone who speaks English, no matter where they live, seem touched by the tale of Scrooge and the Cratchets written by the great story-teller who, as an adult, - though few know it – chose to become a Unitarian. As the author of this morning’s reading put it, Dickens decided to become a member of our faith because he wanted to be part of “a reasonable religion” that would allow him to understand Jesus “as an extraordinary human being rather than as the son of God” and would affirm that humankind: “needed a reformation of heart before it could substantially reform the political and economic structures it had created.”
Dickens become a Unitarian because he could no longer believe in the kind of Christianity that preferred talking about how a vengeful God wanted to damn people instead of talking about how a loving God would want them to be good. Believing this, Dickens decided to write a Christmas story not about how Jesus came into the world to save us from sin, but about how people could be loving and generous even in the face of the most oppressive circumstances.
Dickens’ story about the Cratchits and Scrooge has become one of the most often told stories at Christmas because it contained a message he believed needed to be heard in the society in which he lived. And it’s been told and retold ever since because it’s a message that still needs to be heard. It’s what makes A Christmas Carol transcend the less meaningful stories of Christmas, like that of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who was created as a gimmick to draw people into its stores by Montgomery Ward, the mail order giant that even Rudolph couldn’t keep in from going into bankruptcy. And it certainly transcends the most popular of all Christmas poems: “A Night Before Christmas,” with its sugar plumbs and fairies – and Santa Claus somehow making it around the globe every Christmas Eve to slide down everyone’s chimney – as though everyone had one. There are those who claim “A Night Before Christmas” was also written a Unitarian. That would be like saying just because Garrison Keiller pokes fun at us, he likes us; which he doesn’t!
What’s interesting to me about all of these stories, even the ones about Santa Claus and Rudolf, is that they focus on themes of goodness and generosity – and the triumph of these qualities over the sort of mean-spiritedness exhibited by Scrooge at the beginning of Dickens’ story. I’ll never forget our son Matt, big for his age at ten or eleven and eager to be on stage, appearing as the Ghost of Christmas Future in Dickens’ story, with his long, bony finger made out of paper maché pointing at Scrooge warning him of the dangers of continuing to be such a terrible person.
It’s the kind of image that would be created by a person who said he had become a Unitarian because he was: “Disgusted with our Established church and its … daily outrages on common sense and humanity.” Dickens joined the Unitarians, he said, because he found that they “would do something for human improvement, if they could; and who practice Charity and Toleration.” This is the attitude toward life that informed all of Dickens’ stories. He wanted to open the hearts and minds of his readers to the injustices to which many people are normally deaf and blind. Rather than soothing people with visions of “sugar plums and fairies,” Dickens wanted people to be able to see the world as it really was, including all the parts of it they’d prefer not to see. It’s what he did in Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities and all of his other stories. Through his story-telling, Dickens wanted people to think about what was wrong with the society in which they lived, a society in which those who had wealth and power, like Scrooge, seldom felt any obligation to be generous.
In analyzing A Christmas Carol, Fred Kaplan, the author of this morning’s reading, says: Scrooge’s stinginess is not merely the expression of an unfortunate personal trait. It has a particular content. Scrooge is primarily a businessperson, and the drive for profit has become a mania for him. Making money supersedes any other motive in his personality….
As Dickens portrays him: Scrooge is indifferent to the humanity of his employees. Bob Cratchit exists for him only as a means to an end. He exploits Cratchit as much as he can; going so far as to save a few pennies on coal while Cratchit shivers in the next room. Dickens is exploring the use and abuse of economic power.
Though not all business people are like Scrooge at the beginning of the story, if this doesn’t sound like a lot of today’s business practice, I don’t know what does. What Dickens is trying to do is expose his readers to the underworld of humanity, the behaviors covered up by all the sugar plums – the underworld that those of privilege believe is a portion of life for which they have no responsibility, believing, as a part of the Bible they like to quote puts it: “The poor will always be with us.” They believe this is the way God wants life to be like. Confronted with the notion of being generous at Christmas, Scrooge says: “I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”
It’s as though Scrooge never heard Jesus talking about being one’s brother’s or sister’s keepers – or the older story about how hard it was going to be for the rich to get through the eye of a needle. When Scrooge is told that many of those who are destitute would rather die than to have to endure the situations in which they are forced to live, he answers: “If they would rather die, they had better do it,” since they are not his “fellow-passengers to the grave.” Instead, they are “a race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
The genius of Dickens is he’s not willing to let Scrooge continue to be such an uncaring person. Dickens believes people can change, whether it’s Scrooge or his readers. So, when Scrooge finally catches on to the meaning of the boney finger, he’s transformed, and not in a way that’s superficial. As it’s put by the author of an article called “Christmas Can Change Even Scrooge:”
Dickens handles Scrooge’s conversion with the same depth and subtlety as he does the nature of his stinginess. Scrooge’s conversion is not sentimentalized into an unbelievable change-of-heart; rather his transformation is presented with great wisdom and psychological perceptiveness. By re-living the pain of his early childhood and shedding long dried-up tears for the suffering little boy he once was, Scrooge reconnects to human feeling.
Through his encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Past Scrooge comes to understand what shaped him into the kind of person he’s become. Through his encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Present he comes to understand not only the effects of his actions from someone else’s perspective; he’s able to see what the members of the Cratchet family are like. “Up until then, he had never allowed himself to think, feel or care about them as people who were really human.” It’s only when he’s able to understand the Cratchets as real people that Scrooge can feel what it would be like to exhibit the kind of generosity and kindness they do – and to sense the sort of happiness goes with being able to behave this way.
When the Ghost tells Scrooge that Tiny Tim will surely die if all he has be eat is what his father can afford to buy with what he pays him, Scrooge begins to understand how horrible it is to have to live this way – and how much of it is his fault. Scrooge is appalled when the Ghost reminds him that he said he should Tim should go ahead and die, since it would “decrease the surplus population.” Ghost says to Scrooge:
Man, if man you be in heart … forbear the wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is. It may be, that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child.
Scrooge finally understands the pain he has caused by the way he has treated Bob Cratchi and it pains him. In fact, what he sees pains him so much he knows he has to change. He comes to understand that if he wants to remove the pain of his indifference he can’t remain indifferent to what he does. He has to get rid of his Scrooginess if wants to avoid what he sees happening to him when the Ghost of the Future comes along.
In A Christmas Carol, Dickens reminds us that if we want to be happy we’ve got to let compassion and generosity take hold of our lives, rather than living with the unhappiness indifference will bring. It’s this Dickens wants us to think about at Christmas. He wants us to think about the kind of humanness and concern for others that attracted him to a faith in which we share. It’s what makes A Christmas Carol our story at Christmastime.
In light of this, may this Holiday Season be a time when not only are our spirits lifted, but our hearts and minds are opened, as were the mind and heart of Scrooge. May this be a time when, no matter what the problems of our pasts or the difficulties we must yet face, we are able to feel what Scrooge finally felt when, in response to his generosity, he heard Tiny Tim say: “God Bless, Mr. Scrooge. God bless us everyone.”
A READING FROM
DICKENS – A BIOGRAPHY
BY FRED KAPLAN
In his biography of Charles Dickens, Fred Kaplan describes how this great story teller who had become a Unitarian brought the values he shared with this faith into the “sledge hammer” story called A Christmas Carol he hoped would highlight the abysmal treatment of the poor in his country and motivate people to do something about the poverty into which they were born.
Of Dickens’ faith, Kaplan says: “Having been brought up in a nominally Anglican household he associated organized religion with stale custom at best, with repressive fanaticism at worst. He aspired to a religion of the heart that transcended sectarian dogma. Dickens wanted to be part of “a reasonable religion” that would allow him to understand Jesus “as an extraordinary human being rather than as the son of God” and reinforce his belief that humankind: “needed a reformation of heart before it could substantially reform the political and economic structures it had created. Justice and charity in the public world would only come from such virtues in the private individual.”
Much depended on how powerful were the voices of those calling for reformation and how responsive the ears and hearts that heard. It was as a novelist that Dickens believed he could move other hearts toward higher levels of compassion and idealism and “strike a blow” against identifiable evils.
One of the ways Dickens did this was by writing the story that has come to epitomize the spirit that should lie at the heart of Christmas.