“Your reclamation, then.”

Merry Christmas. Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” has been on my mind frequently during this holiday season. There are three (maybe more) potential reasons for this.

1 – Mr. Dickens wrote a timeless piece of literature, one that speaks to people in every age and circumstance.

2 – With the global economy crashing, this Christmas and perhaps Christmases soon to come will be ah … “Dickensian,” replete with poverty, grime, malnutrition and oppression of the weak by the strong.

3 – Floegel is neither well read nor imaginative, so he falls back on the same material year after year.

Some or all the above reasons may be in force, but “A Christmas Carol” is still worth browsing in that fallow hour of an early Christmas afternoon, when the busy activity of the morning has subsided and before the rich aromas begin wafting from the kitchen. (The scent of Christmas Eve’s slowly roasting pork drives me to distraction as I type this.)

“Scrooge” is now synonymous with “miser,” but Mr. Dickens lifted the word from London street slang of his day. It was a verb, meaning, “to squeeze.” We’re all feeling the scrooge these days and if we re-read “A Christmas Carol,” perhaps we’d best pay close attention to how the Crachits managed to have so much fun with so little money.

Although “A Christmas Carol” is a fine ghost story and a wonderful parable for children, it’s worth remembering that Mr. Dickens’s intended audience were the rich and powerful men of his day. Dickens’s time was one of no social safety net, an atmosphere certain people have tried hard to re-create these past eight years. It was the wealthy few at the top of Victorian society who decided for all how much fairness or comfort there was to be at Christmas or any other time.

The wealthy few are fewer and less wealthy this year than they have been for some time. I wonder what that means for them and for us all. The Ghost of Christmas Past arrives and tells Scrooge he’s there for his welfare. Scrooge rejects that and the ghost shifts to “Your reclamation, then.” It’s a short sentence, but powerful. The ghost has arrived to reclaim Scrooge, to bring him back to the community of humankind. In their travels together, we see the forces – not all of his own making – which caused Scrooge to turn his back on his fellows.

Early in the story, Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, tries fruitlessly to remind the old man that Christmas is not about spending money – or making money. Instead, it’s a time for letting old grudges slip away and forgiving wrongs and debts, fiscal or otherwise.

The themes of forgiving and reclaiming are sounded again and again as Scrooge spends his night among the spirits and then wakes on Christmas morning to find that those gifts of the spirit exist in the light of day, if only he has the grace to accept them.

This Christmas, perhaps more than others, as we are about to change our government – indeed, to reverse our government’s direction – and as we contemplate what may be years of hardship ahead, then forgiveness and reclamation may be the best sentiments to hold in our hearts.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

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