'Tis the season--again--for holiday travel and get-togethers with friends and family amid the challenges of a global pandemic. Yes, personal and public protection measures remain essential, but that doesn't mean you have to be a Scrooge about traveling and spending time with loved ones. --WebMD
Hear that? It's the sound of A Christmas Carol being read aloud in homes, performed on movie and TV screens, and produced on stages all over the planet. You think the Hallmark Channel's Christmas movies are ubiquitous? Bah, humbug! Scrooge never sleeps this month. It's a wonder he can even find time to take a meeting with Spirits.
Which reminds me of...
Whistlestop Bookshop, Carlisle, Pa., posted on Facebook earlier this month: "Peculiar, perhaps, to share this illustration by Harry Furniss to a 1910 edition of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, but today has turned into a dark rainy Monday. Happy December!... Everyone should re-read the Carol sometime this month, if only to remind yourself how radically progressive it was (and is). How Dickens could show you horrors of society, tragedies of personal choices, and make you laugh at the same time is a mystery of art...."
Which reminds me of...
Yesterday, I typed "Dickens Christmas Carol" into Google News search. The first item to pop up was an op-ed from the San Diego Union-Tribune, headlined "Opinion: Here's what A Christmas Carol can teach us during the pandemic."
Emery Cummins (something of a Dickenisan moniker itself) wrote: "In 2021, we do well to remember this Victorian tale when tempted to place personal convenience over the well-being of others. It is all too easy to scoff, 'Bah, humbug!' when asked to show proof of vaccination or wear a mask. But when the common welfare of our fellow citizens hangs in the balance, we have a community obligation to set aside personal feelings and engage in behaviors that protect the weakest among us from serious illness or death."
I also discovered that People's Light theater in Philadelphia is featuring a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol with a different perspective. The Inquirer reported that producing director Zak Berkman "says he sees Scrooge less as the epitome of greed and more as a man ravaged by loss and fearful of opening his heart. He subtitles his adaptation 'A Ghost Story of Grief & Generosity'.... Grief, is of course, one of the leitmotifs of our current Covid-19 era, whether over economic hardship, social isolation, or the illness or death of loved ones."
Which reminds me of...
In Christopher Morley's classic novel The Haunted Bookshop, proprietor Roger Mifflin observes that after Thanksgiving, "my mind always turns to Christmas, and Christmas means Charles Dickens. My dear, would it bore you if we had a go at the old Christmas Stories?"
Not, however, A Christmas Carol, because Roger proclaims that the other stories are "infinitely better. Everybody gets the Carol dinned into them until they're weary of it, but no one nowadays seems to read the others. I tell you, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas to me if I didn't read these tales over again every year."
Which reminds me of...
The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City displays Charles Dickens's original manuscript of A Christmas Carol every holiday season, always turning one page. This year it is open to the finale of Scrooge's quarrel with his nephew over the value of Christmas. I last paid tribute to this manuscript in 2016, sitting in the library and thinking about the book as both a singular art object as well as the original vessel for a fundamental tale we share again and again to remind ourselves of an important lesson about being human that seemed so obvious when we were children. We... tend to forget.
Which reminds me of...
When the Ghost of Christmas Past and Scrooge attend--though spiritually distanced--the festive office Christmas party Mr. Fezziwig throws for his employees, this conversation ensues:
"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 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
Which reminds me of...
Whistlestop Bookshop's excellent Dickens Facebook post, mentioned above, reached this conclusion: "As a kid I did not empathize with Scrooge's terror at seeing his own tombstone--the silence of the Third Spirit was scarier to me--but as I get older I begin to understand it represents to Scrooge all the lost opportunities for joy and happiness. If the tombstone is the sum total of your life, surely it is better to be kind and generous while you're alive and be remembered as such."
Which reminds me of... A Christmas Carol.