Last night I performed one of my annual Christmas traditions by watching a version of “A Christmas Carol”.  This is my favorite Christmas story and, if truth be told, by the time the season is over I’m quite confident that I will watch at least four different version, saving my all-time favorite with Reginald Owens as Scrooge for last.  The story always helps me get into the Christmas spirit and reminds me how very lucky I am… and how much kindness, generosity and good fortune I need to repay.  However, this year a specific passage in the story caused me to have a new reflection.  For those of you that don’t know the story, let me set the scene.  Near the end of the story, while Scrooge is being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge notices that there is something under the Ghost’s robe:

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw!”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

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 shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be party to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This 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 bide the end!”

I found myself struck as never before by the Ghost’s description of “Ignorance”:

“…most of all beware this boy (ignorance), for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

• • Deny it!
  • Slander those who tell it ye!
  • Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse!

And bide the end!”

Charles Dickens wrote these words in 1843, yet I’m not sure they were ever more important than they are today.  I considered these words and reflected upon the last few year: the pandemic; the elections; the campaign ads; the news; the fake news; the bias; the lies; the half-truths; the alternative facts; the manipulation of information for ulterior motives; and so on…

I believe, like Scrooge, we must do all that we can to mend our ways and alter the trajectory of our future, and that of our nation, and our world.  We must come together to find faith, hope and charity in ourselves and a more perfect union for our country and our world.

…unless the writing be erased, I see that written which is Doom.

Let our hope, our prayer, for this holiday season be inspired by another passage from Charles Dicken’s masterpiece:

“…it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”