My New Kentucky Home

A blog about faith and family, home and homeschooling.

Charles Dickens and the Scrooge in Each of Us

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So is the tradition of sending Christmas cards dying a slow death?  Seems we get fewer and fewer of them every year.  Not that I’m criticizing anybody for that!  How can I?  I haven’t done an actual card myself in years!  People are just busier than they used to be, not to mention they are connected with more people in more ways than ever before, which I think sometimes can make it a little difficult to know how to narrow down the Christmas card list.  And have you checked out the price of postage?  Yikes!  No wonder people are less inclined to do Christmas cards than they used to be.

I love Christmas cards, but I started doing the Christmas newsletter thing many years ago and it’s become a tradition with me, so I’ve kept it up.  And before you run away from this blog as quickly as your little fingers can take you, please know this newsletter is NOT one of those–Rob got another promotion this year…Susan continues to make straight A’s and was just voted class president…Kyle is captain of the football team…We enjoyed our trip to Bermuda…blah, blah, blah–kind of newsletters.

I wouldn’t do that to you.  (And we didn’t do any of that stuff anyway!)  I just love writing and my Christmas newsletter is an opportunity to share some of my ramblings with others.  I distribute or mail as many paper copies as I can, but I can’t get to everybody, so what a joy to have another format where I can post my thoughts!

So here it is, with very minor editing for personal reasons.  Thanks for reading.  And let this be my Christmas wish to all of you.

Christmas 2013
 
To Our Dear Friends and Family:
 
There are few names more closely associated with Christmas
than Charles Dickens.  There are Dickens’ Christmas Shops and Dickens’ Christmas concerts and lovely
(though ridiculously overpriced) Dickens’
Christmas Village pieces, all because of the legacy created by a special
Christmas story.
 
Personally, I love Charles Dickens any time of the year.  His writing
can be exhausting, like aerobic exercise for the mind, but it’s fun to read
provided you’re in no hurry.  Dickens
should be savored slowly and intentionally, like a good piece of
cheesecake.  He is a masterful
storyteller and a brilliant wordsmith, and for
a lover of language like myself, his writing is slow, but beautiful music.
 
Even if you’ve never picked up a Dickens novel, I know
you’re familiar with A Christmas Carol.  Written in 1848, it is as much a part of
Christmas tradition as candy canes and Jingle Bells.  It’s amazing, really, the way one little
story has so impacted Christmas culture. 
It is A Christmas Carol that
popularized the phrase, “Merry Christmas.” 
Many historians believe our Christmas custom of large dinners with
seasonal foods and drinks is a direct result of Dickens’ writings.  The very name, “Scrooge,” is a synonym for a selfish,
grouchy, curmudgeonly man.  And at Christmas
gatherings it’s not uncommon for someone in the group to belt out Tiny Tim’s, “God
bless us, Every One,” usually in a poorly executed British accent.  
 
The storyline of A
Christmas Carol is powerful; the characters, timeless. 
 
But let me take just a moment to tell you about the
characters in our own little story.  2013
has brought change and growth and blessing for my husband and I, but the two of us
continue to delight most in the thing we consider our highest calling: being
Mom and Dad to four amazing kids.  We’ve
always valued family, but the older we become the more I think we recognize
that, though there are things we’d like to accomplish and goals we’d like to
realize, we MUST have a strong family.  Families
these days spend an awful lot of their time with each member running in a different
direction, nobody headed much of anywhere together.  We’d rather it not be that way for us.  So
together we face the good and bad of life and together we learn about Jesus and together we study everything from John Hancock to pterosaurs to
Latin verbs.  And together we find God’s grace abundant often and sufficient always. 
 
But back to Mr. Dickens. 
His A Christmas Carol was a
direct attack on many of the social evils of the day.  And, yes, there were social evils in the 19th century, some that would
horrify us even today in this age of disrespected life and threadbare morality.  The industrial revolution was fertile soil
for greed that disregarded humanity in some awful ways.  Entire families were often thrown into
debtors’ prisons or separated in workhouses, often never to be reunited again.  Children were abused and neglected in
reprehensible manner—the children of the poor forced to work in deplorable conditions
for wretched pay while the children of the rich left to the care of nannies
or shipped off to boarding schools.  Spending
time with one’s own children was unfashionable among the wealthy and reserved
only for those who couldn’t afford an alternative. 
 
Dickens himself had suffered for society’s assault on the
family and he went to battle against the attitudes of the day with the most
powerful weapon he had in his possession—his
pen.  Though his faith is uncertain,
his novels, A Christmas Carol in
particular, are chock full of biblical quotations and references to Christ.  Whatever the condition of his heart, there
can be no doubt he had great respect to the things of God and a knowledge that a single encounter with Christ could
change everything. 
 
Ebenezer Scrooge presented an extreme; “A squeezing,
wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” the book
describes him.  Even our least favorite people don’t generally qualify
for so hard a pronouncement as that!  But
I think Dickens was addressing the tiny
bit of Scrooge that sometimes dwells in each of us, that causes us to shut
our hearts, maybe even unintentionally, to what lies just beyond the smug
little capsules we live in.  Sometimes, even, to shut our hearts to those we love. Dickens
says,   
 
“…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…No space of regret
can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!”
 
But I like what else he said, through Scrooge’s nephew:
 
“…I
have always thought of Christmas-time, when it has come round–apart from the
veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can
be apart from that–as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant
time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and
women seem to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below
them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another
race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
 
May we be willing this Christmas, and always, to freely open
our closed hearts, remembering the Savior who freely did the same.
 
And
she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his
people from their sins. –Matthew 1:21
 
And in proper Dickens fashion, may we wish you a Merry Christmas!  And God bless you, Every One!

 


 
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Comments

  1. Lyli @3-D Lessons for Life says

    How did you know that Dickens is one of my favorite novelists? 🙂
    This post makes this English teacher super happy.

    "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." 🙂

    Thanks for linking up with Thought-Provoking Thursday. 🙂

  4. Shannon @ Of The Hearth says

    That's a delightful letter! Thanks for sharing it.
    I've noticed we get fewer cards each year, too. I still take the time and pay the outrageous price for postage to send cards with a brief update letter. I find motivation to do this because sometimes it's the only contact I have through the year with a handful of loved ones who live far away and aren't on social media.

    • kentuckysketches says

      I think that's one of the beauties of the Christmas card tradition–using it as an opportunity to make contact with people we might not communicate with regularly. I'm so glad you're one of the few still doing it! It's one Christmas tradition I'd love to see continue!

      Thank you for stopping by today! And Merry Christmas!

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