A Christmas Reflection

It is 8 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, DC and I woke up to a blast of heat – so much so that I got up to lower the thermostat. In this experience I knew from the moment I rose that this Christmas, and every Christmas for that matter, I am luckier than millions across the country and globe.

Last night I re-read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and have been mildly mocked for years as I’ve said since I was a kid that it was one of the most influential books for me. During sophomore year in high school, we were asked to write about any book that meant something to us, no questions asked. But when I submitted in advance that I had chosen this brief holiday story the teacher called me in to say if I did, he would automatically fail me.

I wrote it anyhow and focused on a wonderful edition, The Annotated Christmas Carol. It is a painstaking line by line analysis of the historic context of the book, where and how Dickens came up with his characters and story, and a poignant review of the societal imbalances brewing in early Victorian England in the earliest days of the industrial revolution.

We were raised to enjoy – and countless marketers and animated cartoons milked – the story of a greedy old man coming to terms with his past, the realities of the present and how his choices, unchanged, would leave him abandoned. We love, as the Victorians loved, a good conversion story. And this is certainly that.

It is sad that this became something of a holiday cliché because as much as Oliver Twist and his other great novels, Dickens in short order offers blunt assessment of society around him, our ability to let our own lives – concerns and joys – look the other way, and our expectation that what challenges we do face as a society must be someone else’s jobs. What were the workhouses, or the poor laws – weren’t they sufficient government policy to address those without opportunity? Weren’t good-hearted citizens collecting funds for a holiday meal taking care of the issue? We draw comfort on that as we rush to a holiday occasion in and around evidence of institutional neglect if not failure.

There were three quotes from this little book that have long stood out for me well before the protagonist’s “turnaround.”

The first came at the end of the Ghost of Christmas present:

“From the folding of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable… They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them….

Scrooge started back, appalled… “Spirit! Are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s… the boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes and make it worse. And abide the end!”

The second is in this exchange with the ghost of Jacob Marley:

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who new 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!”

But the most cautionary reminder comes from the end of that same chapter as the protagonist looked out the window to see a sea of lamenting spirits:

“Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.”

Every year, with mixed success, I commit to losing a few pounds, do a few more pushups, see new countries, spend more time with loved ones.

This year with greater intentionality and concrete measurement, I will work at least at a piece of helping those who want the opportunity to learn and build better lives; to surround myself with like-minded co-conspirators; and avoid the social media and factionalized FOMO that confuses words and pictures for action.

While I still can.

Please hold me accountable.

And thank you for your actions, thoughts, and kindness.